Gensou Rakuen
by Thermopyle
Summary: A Ranma/Noir crossover.
1. parts 1 and 2

Ranma belongs to Rumiko Takahashi. Noir is written by Ryouei Tsukimura  
and directed by Kouichi Mashimo.  
  
Gensou Rakuen  
By Thermopyle  
Thermopyle.anifics.com  
  
#####  
  
Chloe's last knife flew through the air and embedded itself within the  
Japanese man's gun-arm when he brought it up to defend himself, causing  
the yakuza thug to yell out in pain. She took the chance the  
distraction gave her and rushed forward as best she could on her wounded  
leg, hoping he wouldn't recover in time to shoot her again, this time in  
a more fatal location.  
  
He did.  
  
She was almost there, just a few feet away and about to make a desperate  
grab for the knife, when he realized how close she was and swung the gun  
around, wildly, desperation and fear on his face despite the difference  
in size between the two of them, and fired.  
  
The bullet smashed into her left shoulder and she was knocked away,  
falling on her back to the floor. The pain flooded through her, both  
from the sensation of tearing skin and muscle and from the impact when  
she hit, and she was stunned momentarily. Quickly regaining her senses,  
she pushed up with her other arm and shoved both legs out, trying to  
jump to the side in case he fired again.  
  
In her pain, she'd forgotten about the previous, less distracting  
injury, and when she tried to use her right leg the pain flared back up,  
causing her to collapse again as her movement became uncoordinated and  
too weak to succeed.  
  
Why wasn't she dead yet?  
  
Blocking the pain with a great deal of mental effort and deliberately  
slowing her breathing because she knew that if she was to survive, it  
would only be through desperate, unfailing action, she looked up at the  
gunman.  
  
He was staring down at her now, blood dripping from both hands. In one,  
her knife was held in a fist, and the blood was from his other arm, from  
where the blade had been removed. In the opposite hand, his gun was  
held and blood could be seen leaking out the cuff of his suit and  
running down the body and barrel of the gun before falling to the ground  
below. His breathing was rapid, much more so than her own, and he had a  
furious look on his face.  
  
He tossed the knife aside, still looking at her, then raised the gun to  
aim at her face. "You little bitch," he said, in Japanese, which she  
knew, "you cost me a good job today. When you meet my boss and comrades  
in hell, give them my regards."  
  
As he squeezed the trigger, another form shot out from behind the nearby  
trees and its arm flashed in a scratching motion towards the man's. The  
bullet went wide, impacting on a nearby tree, and his sleeve was  
instantly shredded, bits of cloth scattering into the air around it, and  
the skin bared beneath was ripped, long trenches of gore appearing, deep  
enough that the bone was evident in several places. The man dropped the  
gun, screaming once again, holding it to his chest and cradling it  
protectively with his other hand as they both looked at the newest  
arrival in astonishment.  
  
It was a boy, about ten years old, just like Chloe, and whereas the  
yakuza had scratches on just his arm, the boy had them all over his  
body, albeit less severely. His filthy clothes, some kind of martial  
arts dogi, were barely intact, and even the few areas that they covered  
could be seen to have barely-dried scabs running underneath them from  
the more openly displayed regions.  
  
Not having any idea what was going on, or how the boy had done that,  
Chloe managed to push herself up, favoring her right leg and being  
careful not to move the injured arm. The boy, an odd gleam in his eyes,  
turned at her movement to look at her, and then when the man, tears  
running down his face as he tried to hold his arm motionless, reached  
down to pick the gun back up with his uninjured hand, the boy whirled  
back around and... hissed at him, like a cat. He froze.  
  
Unsure of whether the boy was friend, foe, or just some wandering  
psychopath, Chloe stood slowly, carefully. The boy ignored her, so she  
moved away from him, her eyes never wavering as she watched him, unsure  
of his capabilities. He stayed crouched in front of the yakuza thug,  
staring at the man intently as if the two of them were cat and mouse,  
and the cat wanted to play.  
  
Backing up to almost fifteen feet away where her knife lay on the  
shortly-cut grass, she picked it up with her off hand, wiping the dirt  
that had stuck to it from it's impact with the ground off on her cloak.  
She'd trained to use both, but her left hand, the injured one, still had  
the advantage. That wouldn't stop her from killing with her right,  
however.  
  
Taking advantage of the man's frozen terror, she snapped the knife  
forward in a throwing motion. It hit him in the throat, catching him  
completely by surprise, and he fell to his knees, clutching at his  
throat as a look of terror filled his face. He clearly didn't know what  
to do, whether to try pulling it out or if that would simply aggravate  
the situation. A few moments later and it became a moot point.  
  
The boy moved his attention from the corpse ahead of him back to Chloe,  
who stood still, unsure of what to do next. Witnesses had to be killed,  
but she was already injured, and she'd thrown her knife away to kill her  
target's last bodyguard because she wasn't sure if she could get close  
enough to the boy to simply stab the man to death, instead. Would the  
boy let her kill him, when he'd already shown some odd fighting ability?  
  
His clothes, his feral state, the scratches all over his body, and the  
way he'd come out of the forest surrounding her target's mansion  
suggested he was some kind of wild kid who'd developed mental issues  
after being abandoned at some point. So was he capable of telling  
anybody about her or what he'd seen, and if he was, would he be  
believed?  
  
Wondering for a brief moment what that child would do, Chloe quickly  
came to a decision. She stepped forward, careful not to hurt her leg or  
swing her torso enough to aggravate her shoulder, and began to move  
towards the gun that lay on the ground several feet away from the boy  
and corpse.  
  
He did nothing in response, other than continue to study her closely, so  
her actions gained a bit of confidence, although she didn't let her  
guard down. She soon reached the gun and bent to pick it up, keeping  
her eyes on the boy the whole time despite the incredible pain coming  
from both of her gun wounds.  
  
Slipping her finger into the trigger guard, she raised the gun to point  
at him. "Sorry kid," she said quietly, and he tensed, then she pulled  
the trigger.  
  
He moved to the side, evading the bullet completely, but did nothing  
else.  
  
She adjusted her aim with a bit of concern. She hadn't seen him move.  
She fired again.  
  
He moved back.  
  
She began pulling the trigger as quickly as she could, the shots never  
quite hitting him as he began to run about in random directions, but  
always staying within thirty or forty feet away from her.  
  
When the last shot was spent, she tossed the gun to the side, deeming it  
useless. The boy, still once again, watched as she pulled her knife out  
from the man's throat, then wiped it clean on his clothes before  
slipping it into a harness beneath her cloak.  
  
The kid was crazy. Leaving him alive would cause no problems.  
  
She turned and walked away, towards where she was supposed to be picked  
up, and then heard him move to follow.  
  
  
Chloe sat silently in the back seat of the limo, wishing fervently that  
the damn boy would die and leave her alone. He'd followed her all the  
way to the rendezvous point, then, when she was forced to answer  
questions about who he was and why he was following her, the men who  
were to escort her back to the village had been amused at her answer,  
obviously thinking that she was mentally incapable of killing a boy her  
own age. They soon found out it wasn't a mental problem when she told  
them to shoot him, and they all failed.  
  
Having regained a healthy respect for her, as well as a certain sullen  
mood at so having embarrassed themselves, they had agreed to leave the  
boy as he was, and simply depart as planned. Chloe had gotten into the  
limo, and they'd started to drive off. The boy, obviously not wanting  
to be left behind, ran to the car in his strange four-legged lope, and  
ripped a hole in the door before jumping in to resume staring at her.  
  
She was the only person sitting in the back seat, and she was too  
injured to fight such a lunatic, so she did nothing. The men had been  
forced to do the same, since the only way they could try shooting at him  
again was to stop the car, get out, and then shoot into it, and there  
was no telling if the boy would stay put if she were to exit first out  
of a desire to not get shot herself. So they, too, did nothing, and the  
car continued towards where the private jet back to France was waiting.  
  
The hole in the side of the car, making the wind blow rather loudly as  
they drove, as well as the intent study she received from the crazy cat-  
boy sharing a much-too-confined space with her, was really beginning to  
get annoying.  
  
Despite that, she soon found herself drifting, getting sleepy after the  
night's events, and was about to slip off into unconsciousness when  
something heavy landed in her lap.  
  
Her eyes shot wide open and she looked down, letting out a whimper of  
pain from where the crazy kid was curled up on her legs. After shoving  
him to the floorboard violently with her usable hand, she quickly  
slipped it back within her cloak and drew the knife, trying to stab him  
with it before he recovered.  
  
She missed, and in the small lunge forward, managed to unbalance herself  
as her leg once again failed to move properly. She fell on her face  
beside the knife, which was embedded partially into the floorboard, and  
the boy simply sat next to her, staring once again with a hint of  
playfulness and something close to reproach in his feral eyes.  
  
Glaring at him, she pulled herself back up to the seat behind her and  
resolved to stay awake from then on.  
  
  
She lay now on a table in the jet, a plastic sheet beneath her to catch  
the blood, as a Soldats physician inspected her injuries. The leg, she  
knew, had just been grazed, so there was no bullet to be removed and  
only the cut to be sealed with some number of stitches. The shoulder,  
however, had been hit regularly and the bullet had, after impacting hard  
enough to chip bone, remained in her flesh and would need to be dug out.  
  
Noir or not, that wasn't a level of pain she was eager to experience,  
and she accepted the suggestion of the doctor to have drugs administered  
to keep her unconscious for that part of the operation. As she slipped  
off to sleep, she hoped that the crazy boy that nobody had been able to  
get rid of wouldn't try jumping on her again and making an even bigger  
mess of things.  
  
  
Chloe started awake as the plane touched down on her native soil. She  
was back in France, and would soon be rejoining Artena, who would look  
after her until her next mission was necessary.  
  
She was no longer on the table and instead was lying on a comfortable  
couch, a blanket draped over her body, underneath which she found  
herself to be naked except for panties and the bandages on her leg and  
shoulder. Both injuries were somewhat painful, but much less so than  
they had been right after she had received them. The drugs would  
probably finish wearing off soon and the pain would return, but she  
could deal with that without any problems.  
  
Sitting up, she tossed the blanket aside and moved to stand. She  
stopped in surprise when she saw the boy in the room and looking at her  
with those strange eyes of his. What was his problem? Presumably  
nobody had been able to get him to leave her in peace while she slept,  
but apparently he had been deemed safe enough to be left alone with her  
while she did so.  
  
Ignoring him for the moment, she carefully pulled on the change of  
clothes that had been set aside for her, then belted on her various  
harnesses, which had already been stocked with knives, and wrapped her  
cloak about herself before sitting back down. The plane was still  
moving, so there were a few more minutes before they finished taxiing  
around the airport and were able to get out.  
  
Looking back at the boy to study him in return, she saw that, even  
though his dogi was still in miserable shape and he had smears of dirt  
on various parts of his body, he was remarkably fit for their age. He  
was also fully healed from all of the scratches that had covered him-  
-she looked at the digital clock on the nearby wall--only fifteen hours  
before. How was that possible?  
  
He'd been awake both when she'd been knocked out, and since she woke up,  
had he slept at all in that time? If so, had anybody tried again to  
kill him, or had they figured keeping out of his way was the safest  
option?  
  
Either way, it looked like Artena would probably have to decide what to  
do with him. She'd already proved herself incapable of doing so in her  
current condition, and none of the men on the plane would be able to,  
either, whether that was from lack of opportunity or from lack of taking  
advantage of some opportunity that she didn't even know about.  
  
Once the plane pulled to a stop, the doctor knocked on the door and  
entered. He wasn't surprised to find her awake, and quickly ran through  
a set of questions with her about how she felt, just to make sure that  
he'd done his job properly. Once that was done with, he left and she  
followed him out the door, the boy trailing behind them as expected.  
  
There was another car waiting for them on the runway, not far from the  
stairway leading out of the plane, and she said nothing to any of the  
people about before immediately going to get into the car, holding the  
door open for the boy because she definitely didn't want to endure  
another windy ride. He jumped in after a moment's hesitation, and she  
stepped inside herself, then once she was settled, the driver switched  
gears and they headed off.  
  
They drove for hours through farming country, the last stretch being a  
dirt road many miles long, before they arrived at the village. The  
driver stopped at the outskirts of town, knowing he wasn't very welcome  
within, and they exited the car and she began to walk, the boy  
scampering about alongside her. Everybody she passed bowed in respect,  
although there were a number of curious glances at her companion, but  
she did nothing to acknowledge their gestures and simply moved on. Soon  
they were past the town and headed for the manor itself.  
  
Now the boy was behaving a bit more wildly, jumping into trees and  
chasing off after butterflies, and despite her hopes that he'd lose  
track of her while running off, he did not, and always reappeared after  
several minutes. She'd been expecting him to wear himself out and  
simply collapse into sleep, since they'd both been awake when they  
arrived at the airport not long after dawn and he hadn't, as far as she  
knew, had any sleep during the night, but he was still behaving as  
actively as when she'd first seen him the night before. Jetlag didn't  
seem to have any hold on this boy.  
  
Soon enough it was getting dark and they still had several hours of  
travel ahead of them, so she unwrapped her cloak and laid down a bit off  
the side of the path, covering herself with it for a bit of added  
shelter. Almost immediately the boy tried to jump into her lap again,  
which she found odd since he'd left her alone when she was sleeping  
before, but she simply shoved him to the side, after which he kept his  
distance. She fell asleep wondering how human eyes could glow in the  
darkness like his did.  
  
When she woke the next morning it was just after dawn, and the pain from  
her injuries had abated somewhat, to be replaced by an added general  
soreness in the damaged parts of her body. It wasn't too uncomfortable,  
and she was able to ignore it just as she had after being shot in the  
first place.  
  
Standing up, she saw that the boy was awake, and she wondered yet again  
if he had had any sleep or if he was just perpetually alert, as seemed  
to be the case. Dismissing it as unimportant, she walked back over to  
the path and was again on her way. The boy quickly followed.  
  
By midmorning she could see the manor and the grape fields surrounding  
it, and she found herself walking slightly faster. It'd been about a  
week since she'd left, and she was eager to return home, to Artena.  
Soon she was almost running through the fields, ignoring the burning in  
her leg as she overworked it and possibly split the stitches. She  
looked about, knowing that somewhere out here, Artena would be attending  
to the grapes as she usually was at this time of day.  
  
A flash of shiny-brown caught her eye and she stopped, turning, to see  
Artena stand up and do the same, looking towards her with a warm smile,  
a basket full of fruit on the ground at her side. Suddenly Chloe was  
flying forward, going as fast as she could, and then found herself in  
Artena's arms.  
  
"Hello, child," said a pleasant voice into her ear.  
  
She looked up and smiled. "Hello, Artena-sama. I'm back!"  
  
"Yes, I see that you are," Artena said, a hint of playfulness in her  
voice. "Did you have fun?"  
  
Chloe heard a sound from behind her, and turned, and she felt Artena's  
posture change as she looked up. A little ways behind them was the boy,  
torn clothes hanging loosely, looking upon them with interest.  
  
"Who is this?" Artena asked, a curious note to her tone as she looked at  
the pigtailed wild-boy, causing Chloe to hate him for distracting Artena  
from her own homecoming.  
  
"He saved my life in Japan," she said, "I tried to kill him, since he  
was a witness, but I haven't been able to, nor has anybody else who  
tried. He won't quit following me." She hesitated, suddenly aware of  
her own slightly labored breath from running and the wetness on her leg,  
where several stitches had probably bust. "Should I try again?"  
  
When Artena didn't answer immediately she separated herself from the  
older woman and prepared to attack. She could see as she did so that  
the boy looked fresh as a daisy, like he hadn't just been chasing her  
for the last twenty minutes as she searched for Artena. How did he do  
that?!  
  
Slipping her hands beneath her cloak, she grabbed several throwing  
knives and quickly snapped her hands forward, releasing them towards the  
boy as fast as she could. Throwing several at the same time was nowhere  
near as precise, but this time she was trying for coverage, not  
accuracy, as she'd already found that he could dodge one at a time with  
ease.  
  
Four knives flew through the air, spread out enough and at different  
heights so that a normal person couldn't dodge in either direction fast  
enough to avoid getting hit, yet they were still close enough together  
that somebody who stood still would get hit by at least one--more, if  
they tried too late to get out of the way. Rather than trying to duck  
or run to the side, or even take cover behind some grape vines, he  
jumped.  
  
Fifteen feet, straight up.  
  
Gawking in surprise for a brief moment, she took advantage of the  
situation and threw some more knives at him, knowing that he didn't have  
enough maneuverability to dodge them as he fell. The knives were on  
target, exactly where she wanted them to be, spread out over an area of  
about a square foot centered on his torso. Before they were even close  
enough for him to block, he swung his arm out in front of the knives as  
if to defend himself from them.  
  
Despite the impossibility of it, his action worked, and the knives were  
all knocked out of the air, hitting the ground at about the same time as  
he did. He never touched them, they just... flew aside, as if hitting  
an invisible wall, or being hit BY an invisible wall....  
  
Chloe stared at the boy in consternation, who looked back in apparent  
boredom. How dare he embarrass her so in front of Artena-sama?  
  
Trying once again, she grabbed several knives and whipped them at him,  
this time not even trying for accuracy, hoping that if one or two flew  
wild he wouldn't have time to react. Instead, he ran forward, right at  
her! Just before the knives would have thunked home into his body, he  
leapt through the air, twisting as he did so, dodging each one. One of  
the knives did go in the wrong direction, but didn't even get close to  
hitting him, two others were a bit off and he was able to slip by with  
feet to spare, and the last slipped through a hole in his dogi before  
continued on its way, having gotten within mere inches of his flesh.  
  
She didn't have time to react to his charge, she was only beginning to  
reach for another knife when his body impacted with hers, his weight  
landing on her chest and knocking her to the ground, the pain from both  
the hit and the landing causing her to cry out despite her best efforts.  
  
Her cloak had been closed when he landed on her, and his weight was  
keeping the flaps immobile, preventing her from reaching any of the  
weapons contained within. While she contemplated what to do, looking up  
at the hateful boy, he bent down to put his face right above hers, then  
licked her on the nose.  
  
She punched him in the head, with the arm that wasn't screaming at her  
for mercy, and he let himself be knocked aside. She knew he could have  
stayed put if he wanted to, he was obviously toying with her for some  
reason.  
  
Breathing heavily, she pushed herself up, again favoring opposite arms  
and legs, then drew out her dagger and moved to attack at close range,  
instead. She didn't think she would be successful at that, either, but  
Artena-sama seemed to want the boy taken care of, and she wasn't going  
to let her down, or dishonor that child as her future partner.  
  
"Chloe."  
  
She stopped, but didn't take her eyes off the boy. "Yes, Artena-sama?"  
  
"Has he ever jumped on you like that before?"  
  
"No, Artena-sama... twice he jumped into my lap, but never onto my  
chest."  
  
"Has he ever tried to hurt you?"  
  
She frowned. "No, Artena-sama, he just... stares at me, like he's  
playing a game, and it's my move."  
  
"Very well. That's enough for now, lets go inside and eat."  
  
Chloe turned in confusion, the boy forgotten for the moment, and watched  
Artena pick up the basket of grapes and then move towards the manor,  
holding it at her side. Looking back over at the boy, she hesitated,  
then moved to pick up as many of her knives as she could find, and he  
did nothing to obstruct her. When she gave up on finding the last  
three, she turned and headed after Artena, and the boy followed behind  
her.  
  
  
With Artena's urging, Chloe went to her room and changed into some more  
comfortable clothes, being careful not to upset the bandages any more  
than they already had been. Also at Artena's urging, she left her  
harnesses in her room and headed back to the kitchen unarmed. It made  
her feel nervous, with that boy following her everywhere, but the fact  
that he hadn't attacked yet as well as the way he'd easily bested every  
effort she made to kill him when she did have weapons consoled her  
somewhat, although she'd rather have a knife in her hand if he did  
attack, even knowing that it would probably do no good.  
  
When they returned to the dining room, there were three plates set out,  
and Artena was already sitting at her usual place. The boy's plate was,  
thankfully, not set where that child ate when she came on her infrequent  
visits. Chloe sat down in her spot, and, when given permission, began  
to eat. The boy simply jumped up onto the table and put his face in the  
food, somehow managing to transport the stuff directly up into his mouth  
in a manner she didn't quite see, and then by the time she was on her  
third bite, he was licking the surface of the plate clean. She stared  
for a moment, but when she saw that Artena was continuing as if nothing  
had just happened, she resumed eating her own meal in silence, waiting  
to see what Artena would say.  
  
Once they were both finished, she looked at Artena expectantly.  
  
"Did the mission go successfully, apart from this boy's... unexpected  
participation?" asked the older woman.  
  
Chloe nodded in response. "The target was easily killed, as well as his  
bodyguards, but there was one man who had been separated from them for  
some reason and he caught me by surprise as I was about to leave. His  
first shot hit me in the leg, and I was already down to one knife, so I  
threw it as a distraction and then tried to kill him before he  
recovered." She hesitated. "I failed, and he was about to shoot me  
when the boy arrived and... clawed at his arm, somehow, making him drop  
the gun. I killed the man and then tried to do the same to the boy, as  
a witness, but was unsuccessful."  
  
Artena was silent, and stared at the boy with a thoughtful expression on  
her face, so Chloe looked at him as well, wondering again at the oddity  
that he had displayed in his physical capabilities and the way he acted,  
as well as why he seemed to be fixated on her.  
  
"Has he ever said anything, given any indication of his identity or why  
he's following you around?"  
  
"No, Artena-sama, he hasn't. He's not talked at all, at one point he  
hissed, like a cat, at the man who was trying to kill me." Chloe  
frowned, remembering what he'd looked like at that time. "When he first  
appeared, he had scratches all over his body, but they were gone when I  
woke up on the jet yesterday morning, and they shouldn't have been."  
  
"Well," said Artena, "he doesn't seem to be a threat, so don't hit him  
anymore. We'll just see what happens and take it from there. For now,  
let's get those clothes off and take a look at you, it looks like you're  
bleeding again."  
  
"Yes, Artena-sama," she said, then stood up and moved towards the  
medical room, taking off her clothes and setting them aside, then  
slipping up onto the flat bed contained within for this purpose.  
  
After checking that her shoulder wound was okay despite the fighting  
earlier, Artena peeled off the gauze on her leg, which had been soaked  
through and pulled painfully at the injury when it came loose. Several  
of the stitches had to be re-sewn and she was able to handle the pain  
for that well enough, but she was really annoyed at the way Artena kept  
having to step around the boy, who seemed to delight in putting himself  
in her way.  
  
Soon enough they were done and Artena helped her off the table and  
assisted her in putting her clothes back on, which she appreciated. By  
then it was around one in the afternoon, since they had arrived several  
hours earlier, and Chloe was ready to rest a while, which Artena  
supported--Chloe usually took naps in the early afternoon around her  
training and reading times, and her day so far had certainly been full,  
if not of practice.  
  
After being walked to her room by Artena, with the boy tagging along as  
he seemed happy to do, Chloe was put in bed and the curtains drawn shut.  
She was about to ask if Artena could tell her a story when the boy  
jumped up into the bed and then settled himself down on her stomach,  
curling about like a cat and seeming to think the spot was rightfully  
his. She reached out to shove him away.  
  
"Stop," said Artena, "let him be. We'll see what happens, remember?"  
  
She nodded, still annoyed at him, and Artena let herself out of the  
room, turning the light off as she went.  
  
Chloe lied in bed with the boy's weight on her stomach, happy that he  
didn't weigh much for a boy his apparent age, and tried to not think  
about the knives that were just out of reach within her wardrobe  
cabinet, and how useful it would be to have one of them at this moment.  
  
She was still thinking about that when she fell asleep.  
  
  
Ranma opened his eyes slowly, cautiously, unused to the idea of having  
time to do so. Pops must have some kinda trap planned, some weird  
training exercise that would surely teach him something about an obscure  
martial arts waking technique. It was the only explanation.  
  
Staying still as his now wide-opened eyes looked about the room he was  
in, he wondered at his location. He was lying, curled up, on something  
warm and lumpy that was slightly smaller than he was. It was a person,  
but definitely not his father.  
  
He listened silently for a few minutes, hearing nothing but his own  
breathing, which he was careful to keep controlled and even, and that of  
whoever he had been sleeping on, whose breath sounded the same. They  
must be sleeping.  
  
Trying to keep his weight stationary as he moved, he raised his head off  
of the chest it was lying on, then turned it to the left, to look  
upwards upon the person beneath him.  
  
It was a girl with short reddish-purple hair, a lock of it bound into a  
ponytail that hung along one side of her face. Her eyes were definitely  
not closed, and her mouth was made into a frown as she looked down at  
him.  
  
"Ah... who are you," he asked, "and where's my pop?"  
  
Her frown deepened, and something about the expression on her face made  
him want to laugh, but instead, he just uncurled himself so that he was  
laying lengthwise on top of her, looking straight down at her face and  
in a more comfortable position. He noticed her hands balling into fists  
as he did so, but she didn't move to hit him.  
  
"He's probably back in Japan," she said. "Where you should still be.  
How come you can suddenly talk?"  
  
Back in Japan?  
  
"Hey, what do you mean by that, and where am I?" he demanded, looking  
around the room to see stone walls, and that the room was completely  
bare except for the bed and a clothes cabinet that stood in one corner.  
  
As he was glancing about, he felt the girl shift beneath him and turned  
to look at her, but too late to keep her from hitting him in the side of  
the head and knocking him to the floor, landing on his side.  
  
"Ow... what the hell did you do that for?"  
  
Instead of answering, she threw the sheets she laid under to the side  
and jumped out of bed herself, in the opposite direction from where she  
had pushed him, and ran over to the wardrobe. He heard her pull the  
doors open but couldn't see what she got from inside, since the bed was  
in the way, so he stood up, still annoyed about being hit like that.  
  
Once he did so, he could see that she had furled a cloak about her  
shoulders, somehow managing to buckle the top around her neck already,  
and she had a knife in each hand. She was standing in a position that  
would allow her to throw them easily if she wanted to, he noticed.  
  
Ranma grinned. "I hope you don't think you could hit me with those."  
  
"Who are you, and why have you been following me around?" she asked,  
extending the knives in a threatening gesture.  
  
"Hey, I'm Ranma Saotome of the Saotome School of Anything-Goes martial  
arts, and I don't follow no dorky girls around! You take that back!"  
  
Instead of doing the reasonable thing and saying she didn't mean it,  
then putting the knives down and wandering off to play with some dolls  
or something, she yelled something he couldn't understand, and threw  
them at him!  
  
Surprised by her speed and accuracy, he almost failed to dodge in time.  
They were spaced just under chest-width apart from each other, with each  
one being aimed at a different side of his ribcage so that he couldn't  
escape in either direction without having to move his whole body several  
feet to the side, which he knew he wasn't fast enough for. So instead,  
he lifted his arms into the air and turned, letting them approach him  
from the side, and they quickly flew past him to bounce off the stone  
wall a couple of feet away, falling towards his feet and making him hop  
to escape having his toes cut off.  
  
He turned back to the girl. "Hey, are you nuts?!? Don't do--shit!" He  
dodged the next two knives by rolling forward and putting the bed  
between him and the girl, then before she could jump on top of it and  
stab him from above or go around the bed, he shoved backwards with his  
whole body, sending the bed skidding backwards on its wheels towards the  
girl.  
  
Hearing her startled yelp, he took advantage of the situation, jumping  
to his feet and dashing towards the door, which was luckily on the same  
side of the room as he was, and escaping the room before the girl could  
retaliate. As he passed through the doorway, he swung the heavy wood  
shut behind him to give him more room to escape and find out what was  
going on.  
  
Finding himself in a hallway, the walls and floor made of heavy stone  
like the last room, he guessed and ran left, turning at the nearby  
corner. There was a window on the left, and as he went passed, he  
glanced outside to see snow-capped mountains in the distance, with hills  
closer by, and, a little distant from the building he was currently in,  
fields of some kind.  
  
Where the hell was he?  
  
Continuing to run around in fairly random directions, although trying  
not to go back in the direction he came from, he quickly came upon a  
room with a an old wooden table set up in the middle of it. The table  
had two glasses of water on it and one of what looked like wine, with  
some of that odd foreign silverware set to the sides of each glass. He  
stopped. Where there was a dining room, there was always a kitchen  
nearby, and, looking through the several doors that led out of the room,  
he quickly found it.  
  
For some reason, he was absolutely starving, like he hadn't eaten in  
days, and just the idea of getting some food was making him incredibly  
anxious, his belly growling out 'feed me!' in a pleading, insistent tone  
that he just couldn't resist.  
  
Stepping quickly into the kitchen, he was surprised to see that it was  
already occupied by a woman in her late twenties, who had brown hair  
down to her upper back and some kind of white robes on. She didn't look  
at all Japanese, and, now that he thought of it, neither had that crazy  
girl from earlier. He did notice that she was in the middle of setting  
out a meal for three people, judging from the number of plates she had  
sitting on the counter.  
  
"Um... hi!" he said, a bit nervously, as he looked at her food.  
  
She smiled at him. "Hello, child. You look hungry."  
  
"You bet I am! Is any of that for me?" he asked, pointing to what she  
had on the stove. He wasn't sure what a lot of it was, but it smelled  
pretty tasty and looked reasonably edible. Maybe he could eat most of  
it before that girl showed up looking for him.  
  
"Some of it is. We'll be ready to eat in just a minute, and Chloe  
should be here soon."  
  
Ranma frowned. "Is Chloe the girl with red-purple hair, my age, a real  
psycho?" She smiled, so he continued, "She'll be here pretty soon,  
maybe you should just give me the food now."  
  
"No, we'll all eat together. Don't worry about Chloe, she'll calm down.  
Ah, it's done," she said, turning the stove eyes off and separating the  
food out evenly onto the nearby plates. It didn't look like it was  
going to be enough.  
  
Just as she was finishing, the girl burst into the room, chest heaving  
and knives in her hands. He noticed that she was favoring her right leg  
slightly, and wondered if he'd hit her with the bed earlier, not that  
she hadn't deserved it. She looked like she wanted to attack him, but  
he was standing close enough to the woman that throwing knives at him  
could be risky.  
  
"Artena-sama?" Chloe asked, glaring at him.  
  
"It's time to eat, child," Artena said simply. Chloe frowned, but  
tucked her hands inside her cloak, pulling them back out soon  
afterwards, empty. After doing so she walked calmly up to him, taking  
one of the plates off of the counter at his side, then turned and walked  
back into the dining room.  
  
Ranma followed her example, and heard Artena do the same as he headed  
for the table. He sat down opposite the girl, and Artena sat at the  
head of the table, in-between the two of them.  
  
Chloe and Artena sat in silence for a moment, hands pressed together in  
front of them and eyes closed, then relaxed from their positions and  
began to eat without a word, using those strange looking utensils. He  
stared at his own, trying to figure it out, before picking the thing up  
and trying to spear his... whatever it was, with it. When he lifted, it  
flopped back down onto his plate, so he looked over at Artena to see how  
she was eating.  
  
She was using the edge of the utensil to chop her food into smaller  
pieces, then scooping it up as if with a spoon. He tried duplicating  
the maneuver with his own utensil and found it to work, although holding  
it seemed rather clumsy. Why didn't they just use chopsticks?  
  
Setting the utensil down carefully, he drank some of his water, quickly  
emptying half of the glass before returning to his food, which he  
started shoveling into his mouth as fast as he could, now that he knew  
how to. It was soon gone, so he gulped down the rest of his milk then  
looked to his dining companions to see how they were doing.  
  
Chloe was looking at him with annoyance, gripping her utensil a little  
bit harder than was probably required, and the woman had a slight smile  
on her face, for some reason.  
  
"What?" he asked, looking back and forth between the two of them.  
  
The girl muttered something he didn't quite catch before returning to  
her own meal, and Artena simply said, "I wasn't expecting you to be that  
hungry."  
  
"Oh," he responded, somewhat disappointed. She obviously didn't intend  
to give him any of her food, or make more. Maybe there would be  
something to eat out in those fields he saw earlier?  
  
He sat in silence for a minute, watching them eat, before he felt he  
needed a distraction from all the food that was going into other  
people's mouths.  
  
"Where are we?"  
  
Artena finished chewing, swallowed, then said, "We are right on the  
border between France and Spain. You're a long way from home. What is  
your name, by the way?"  
  
"Oh, it's Ranma Saotome, of the Saotome School of Anything-Goes Martial  
Arts. What do you mean, we're in France?" he demanded, stumbling  
slightly over the foreign word.  
  
"I mean, you're not in Japan anymore. What is the last thing you  
remember?"  
  
Ranma thought back, then frowned. "Well, my dad was teaching me  
something... a new technique. I must have blacked out during the  
training." He looked at Artena suspiciously. "Did you kidnap me?  
Where's my pop?"  
  
"We didn't kidnap you," Chloe said irritably. "You followed me home. I  
was in Japan and you were acting like some crazy animal, you kept  
jumping on me and wouldn't go away."  
  
He stared at her. "I did not!"  
  
"Yes, you did!" she said.  
  
"I did not!"  
  
"Ranma, what are your parents names?" interrupted Artena.  
  
Sticking his tongue at the girl briefly, having had the last word, he  
answered, "My pop's name is Genma Saotome. He told me my mom is dead,  
but I don't remember her anyway."  
  
She nodded in response. "I'll see if I can contact your father. You'll  
have to stay here for a few days, though."  
  
"Okay... it'd be easier if you just told me which way Japan was, though.  
I can walk home, right? Me and my pop have been traveling all over  
Japan, I think I could make it back okay."  
  
Chloe smiled, and he glared at her. "What's so funny?"  
  
"It would take you most of a year to get to Japan from here if you were  
walking, and you would still have to get from China to Japan somehow,  
and I doubt you have any money," Artena answered. "Just stay here a few  
days, and I'll try to get you home, okay?"  
  
Taking advantage of the girl's distraction, he reached out and speared  
some of her food with his fork, slipping it into his mouth before she  
noticed. Somebody that ate as slowly as her obviously wasn't very  
hungry anyway, and besides, she deserved it.  
  
Judging from the look in Artena's eyes, she noticed the movement despite  
his speed, but said nothing, so he merely grinned at her. Maybe being  
here wouldn't be too bad after all, if he could get her to make more  
food for him.  
  
"So?"  
  
Belatedly, he realized he still hadn't answered her question. "Oh.  
Yeah, that might be better, I guess."  
  
"Good," she said, then resumed eating her breakfast. After a minute,  
Chloe started to do the same, and she glared at him when he laughed at  
her look of confusion.  
  
When they finished, Artena told him to have a look around, telling Chloe  
that they needed to go look at her bandages, which made him wonder how  
she'd gotten hurt. At least he knew why she was favoring her right leg,  
though, which he'd noticed earlier.  
  
Rather than starting to explore the house itself, Ranma decided to head  
outside and see what the area was like, since the glance out the window  
had made him curious. Locating a door that led outside was the work of  
a few minutes, and once he exited the building he was left blinking at  
the brightness, since it was so sunny out.  
  
It was also a bit colder than he was expecting. Nothing he couldn't  
handle, but he was still a bit chilly because of the state of his  
clothes. Taking it as an excuse to get some exercise in, he started  
running around the building, looking in all directions as he did so. He  
found that he was located in a small valley, the fields he'd seen  
earlier being a short distance away. Beyond and to the side of those  
fields was an old, broken-down stone structure that looked like some  
kind of coliseum like he'd seen on television.  
  
The mountains seemed to stretch in all directions, or at least rather  
jagged looking hills, but they were higher to the north, and that was  
where the snow-capped peaks were located. If he decided to split even  
after his decision to stay, he'd have to head south, but after that he  
didn't have a clue what direction Japan was in. Would Artena tell him,  
if he asked?  
  
Shrugging the thought aside, he jogged over to some of the nearby field,  
which he soon found to be of grapevines. Reaching out eagerly, he tore  
a bunch away, then proceeded to pop a few of them into his mouth,  
planning on inhaling as many as he could. He was still really hungry.  
  
When he bit down, he found out that they had seeds. Yuck!  
  
Grumbling at the injustice of it all, he started walking around, trying  
to keep moving in the chilly air, and began eating the grapes one at a  
time, spitting the seeds on the ground as he devoured their plump  
wrappings.  
  
He wouldn't be cold if his dogi wasn't ripped near to shreds, and he  
remembered how that had happened, but what about afterwards? How did he  
get here, wherever here really was, from Japan? From traveling all over  
the country with his father he was familiar with Japan's climate, and he  
knew it was a bit too cold here for him to be in Japan, at this time of  
year anyway, which meant Artena had to be telling the truth.  
  
And if she was, then Chloe might be right about him acting like an  
animal and following her around, which really sucked. If that was the  
Nekoken, then he didn't think it was going to be very useful.  
  
Why would he follow her around, though? Sure, she seemed to be a good  
enough fighter, for a girl, and her throwing stuff at him did bring back  
memories of playing with Ucchan, but that's all that Chloe was--a girl.  
She was likely to bang her knee and start screaming her head off or  
something, as one of the girls that wouldn't leave him alone last time  
he went to school had done, and that had gotten annoying real fast.  
  
So if he had been acting like a cat, why would he follow her around?  
Maybe cats were too stupid to know the difference.  
  
Ranma finished off the grapes and tossed the stem into the nearby  
fields, then decided that his hunger had faded enough that going inside  
would be more comfortable than staying out here and getting full while  
being cold. The seeds made it so he just couldn't exercise properly  
while eating--if he tried, he was likely to swallow the damn things and  
choke to death. Besides, he still had to look around inside, to see if  
there was anything fun to play with.  
  
Shivering once more, he headed for the nearest entrance.  
  
  
Chloe laid still as Artena reapplied the bandages, the pressure of her  
touch still painful but getting easier to ignore. She was a fast  
healer, and she would be okay within a week or so.  
  
"Everything looks fine," said Artena. "We'll just keep you on the  
antibiotics I gave you last night for a while, and you should heal  
quickly, as usual."  
  
Chloe nodded. "Artena-sama? Are you really going to let that boy stay  
here?"  
  
"Yes, at least for a few days. After that, we'll see."  
  
She hesitated, then asked, "You aren't going to put him in that child's  
room, are you, Artena-sama?"  
  
"No," said Artena, "I don't think I will. He probably wouldn't like  
sleeping there, anyway."  
  
Chloe frowned at that. He should be happy to be put in that child's  
room, not that he deserved to even go there. It would be disrespectful  
to let him.  
  
"Do you want him to stay with you?" Artena asked, with a hint of a  
smile.  
  
Artena must have read the answer in her face, so she quickly continued,  
"I'll put him in one of the guest rooms. I do want you to try to get  
along with him for now, by the way, at least while you're still injured.  
You need to relax your training for now, too."  
  
"I'll try to be nice, Artena-sama," she said. If that boy were  
disrespectful towards Artena-sama or that child, though, she would have  
to teach him a lesson.  
  
"That's all I can ask," was her reply, as Artena helped her get down off  
of the table and put her clothes back on.  
  
"I'm going to go practice, Artena-sama," Chloe said, wrapping her cloak  
about her shoulders and clipping it shut at the neck.  
  
The older woman looked at her for a minute, then nodded to give  
permission. "Alright, but don't go overboard."  
  
  
Thunk. Thunk. Thunk.  
  
Chloe sighed. There went her last knife again.  
  
Standing up, she walked over to the target and pulled the knives out,  
not even bothering to slip them back into their harnesses, then returned  
to her seat twenty feet away and started over.  
  
There wasn't really anything else she could practice right now, with her  
leg and left arm injured. It was best to let them heal before she tried  
any more strenuous activity, even though she hasn't hesitated to use  
them as hard as necessary when attacking Ranma the day before, as Artena  
had desired her to do. That had been a mission, part of her  
responsibility towards Artena, and her own health wasn't a consideration  
in that case.  
  
Thunk. Thunk. Thunk.  
  
Even when he had made her angry earlier she had been careful to stay  
within certain limits of activity, with her jumping out of bed being  
about as rashly as she had acted with respect to her wounds. She'd paid  
for it, too, having been barely able to throw accurately after the way  
she'd shoved off with her arms, the pain in her shoulder being almost  
unbearable. Her leg wasn't as big an issue, but it, too, needed to  
heal, which is why she hadn't been able to catch Ranma when he fled her  
room.  
  
For that same reason, she was unable to reasonably do more than throw  
knives at a target board, and even then it was just with her right hand  
that she did so. It was chilly out, as well, which made her forced  
inactivity more distressing than it would have been otherwise, since the  
cold made her rather uncomfortable despite the pants and long-sleeved  
shirt she had on underneath her cloak.  
  
Thunk. Thunk. Thunk.  
  
Again, she stood up and went to retrieve the knives. When she was  
halfway there, Ranma appeared at the target and yanked the knives out  
himself. She stopped, and waited. If he wasn't being helpful and  
fetching them for her, she was going to hurt him.  
  
She watched as he started tossing one of her knives up a couple of feet,  
catching it when it fell, then tossing it back up again. He did this  
for several minutes without giving any indication of even seeming to  
notice that she was there. Finally, she gave up on being patient.  
  
"Do you mind? I was in the middle of practicing. Give them back!"  
  
He just looked over at her, eyes shining with innocence. "But why?  
You're a girl, don't you have some dolls to play with?"  
  
Reminding herself that she'd been told to be nice, that his being a  
complete jerk didn't negate that in any way, and that she was injured  
and supposed to be taking it easy, she said, sweetly, "I'll go play with  
my dolls if you can show me that a real man, such as yourself, can do it  
better. Otherwise, YOU can go play with the dolls while I stay out here  
and practice."  
  
He reddened at that, clenching his fist, and, she noticed as some blood  
began to trickle out from within it, cutting himself. "You're on!"  
  
Chloe just turned and walked away, halting where she had been throwing  
from earlier. Ranma had followed her and soon stood at her side,  
alternating between glaring at her and glaring at the target. He was  
also massaging his hand, which seemed to be bothering him.  
  
After a minute of waiting, she asked, "Are you going to throw? Or will  
you just give up?"  
  
Not giving her a verbal answer, he dumped all the knives but one into  
his left hand and took the remaining one between the fingers of his  
right. He pulled his hand back over his head, then brought it down and  
forward quickly, releasing the knife.  
  
It hit the ground about halfway to the target, base first, then flipped  
forward several times, passing the target before coming to a rest.  
  
"Imbecile," she said, in French.  
  
"What did you say?" he demanded, stepping right up to her and yelling  
the words into her face.  
  
"I said 'That was one.' Keep going," she responded calmly.  
  
Ranma stayed there a moment longer, then backed off, muttering something  
she was sure was insulting but didn't quite catch. Looking back over at  
the target, he took a few deep breaths, then prepared to throw again.  
  
This one cleared it by several feet.  
  
He tried again, and missed again. He went through the whole set, some  
hitting the target, none sticking, and by the time he was finished Chloe  
had lost track of most of her knives, which, while annoying, was also  
very satisfying at the same time. She had others inside that she could  
get easily enough, losing some wasn't going to be a problem.  
  
"Well," she said, looking at the target, "it seems I've won. You can go  
ask Artena-sama where my dolls are while I try and see if I can find any  
of the knives you scattered all over the place."  
  
Not waiting for an answer, she walked forward, heading for the first  
one, trying to remember where the others went.  
  
  
Ranma stomped back to the house. Yeah, he'd play with her dolls...  
maybe rip some of them to shreds, but boys could be rough, right? She'd  
deliberately embarrassed him for no reason at all--he'd been about to  
give her the knives back when she'd challenged him like that, and he'd  
had no honorable choice but to accept.  
  
Weapons were for weaklings, and he knew that her skill with knives, no  
matter how surprising in a girl, wouldn't help her at all in a fight  
against him, but it still allowed her to beat him at throwing them.  
He'd lost, horribly.  
  
Which meant he was going to have to train to be better than her.  
  
Brightening slightly at that thought, he started moving a little bit  
faster. The fact that he was still cold was another incentive.  
  
Once inside he headed for Chloe's room, having a general idea of where  
it was. He hadn't gotten around to exploring the place earlier, having  
decided to follow the girl when he saw her exit it when he was on his  
way in, so he wasn't sure where her room was. After a few minutes of  
wandering around the hallways and poking his head through doorways, he  
found the right one.  
  
Her bed was still where he'd shoved it to, right in front of her  
wardrobe, so he pushed it back out of the way and then opened the  
cabinet, looking inside. Not that many clothes were contained within,  
but there were certainly more than he had, and none of them had rips  
like his dogi. Pushing hangers to one side, he looked at the floor, but  
the dolls weren't there, either. Instead, there was a box filled with  
several dozen of the throwing knives she had been using, the thin,  
hiltless blades piled on top of each other.  
  
Figuring she wouldn't miss a few, he grabbed five of them. He'd need  
some for practice. After taking them, however, he realized that he  
didn't have anywhere to hold them. The whole trashed outfit thing was  
really starting to suck, but at least he could hold all five of them  
grouped together within one hand until he went to practice. Hopefully  
Chloe or Artena wouldn't notice before he hid them somewhere.  
  
Shutting the cabinet, he looked around the room again. There weren't  
any dolls.  
  
Ranma frowned. She'd said he could ask Artena where they were, but he  
didn't really want to do that, so he might as well use it as an excuse  
to explore the place. Then, when he found them, he could just pretend  
to play with them for a minute or two, then go start working on his  
knife-throwing skills.  
  
Decision made, he exited through the doorway and started wandering  
around, trying to explore the house as thoroughly as possible. No  
telling what kind of neat stuff might be hidden, even in a house of  
girls.  
  
Most of the place was made of brick, but he found that a few of the  
rooms did have wood starting about five feet high. The most notable of  
these had a very high ceiling and looked like one of those Christian  
churches his pop had dragged him to on occasion while begging for food  
and wine. It even had the whole stained-window thing, the sunlight  
shining through it to cover the room in varying shades of light. Near  
the front of the room were two long swords fastened to the normal podium  
type thing such churches featured, which he thought was rather odd.  
Behind them, on the wall, was the stained glass, which was made in the  
image of two women with the same swords as on the podium, with another  
woman standing between and back from them.  
  
What religion was this, anyway?  
  
Dismissing the thought, he resumed his self-guided tour. There really  
wasn't much to see, there were a few rooms similar to Chloe's, most with  
the beds bare although he did find another that had sheets on it, which  
he figured to be Artena's room. There was also a basement but not  
enough light for him to see into it, and the torches set infrequently  
into the walls of the building were all unlit, so he couldn't use one of  
them to brighten his way downstairs. He'd go back and look at it later,  
though.  
  
It wasn't long before Ranma was pretty sure he'd explored everything but  
the basement, and he still hadn't found any dolls. Where the hell were  
they? Had she hidden them somewhere? He'd been looking for them for  
quite a while, it seemed like....  
  
Ranma smirked. He'd played with her dolls long enough, he decided, so  
now he'd get some practice in. He headed towards the front entrance,  
knives still in hand, and was almost there when he passed a room he'd  
checked out earlier. Before, it had been empty, but now Artena was in  
it. She was sitting at a table set by the window and writing on  
something, but she noticed him and looked up, smiling.  
  
"Ranma?" she said, causing him to stop. "If you're going to go outside  
we're going to need to find out some nicer clothes, because it's a bit  
too cold out to be running around dressed in those rags."  
  
He frowned at her suspiciously. "I ain't wearing no girls' clothes.  
I'll be fine."  
  
She seemed amused by his response, and said, "Chloe's pants and shirts  
are made for boys your own age, she just wears them instead of dresses.  
So they're not girls' clothes."  
  
Ranma shook his head. "If a girl wears them, they're girl clothes."  
  
Artena nodded thoughtfully, studying him, her smile gone.  
  
"Nope. Not gonna do it," he insisted stubbornly.  
  
  
"This sucks," he said sourly, stepping outside. She'd stuck him in a  
pair of brown cotton slacks and a plain white button-up shirt. At least  
they really were guy's clothes, and even though Chloe shouldn't be  
wearing them to begin with, it had worked out well for him. Artena  
either hadn't noticed the knives, which were now in his pocket, or she'd  
decided to overlook them. He wasn't sure which, and didn't really care.  
  
Now that his skin was properly covered, though, the slight chill of the  
fall air was easily ignorable. Artena had told him that she would send  
Chloe into town with him sometime in the next day or two to get more  
clothes, so what he had on now should be alright until then. In the  
meantime he'd spend time practicing to make sure he was able to beat  
Chloe before it was time for him to go back to Japan.  
  
He walked over to where Chloe was still throwing her knives, careful not  
to make any noise, and watched her for a while, trying to get a sense of  
what the movements involved were. He studied the way she gripped the  
knife, the manner in which she swung her arm, and the timing of the  
release as she did so. Ranma also noticed that she almost always hit  
the target near the center, although he wondered why she was only  
practicing with one arm instead of trying to become proficient with  
both.  
  
Deciding that he'd picked up the basics of knife throwing, he headed off  
towards the ruins he'd seen earlier, of that old coliseum. That'd  
probably be a good place to practice, since it was far enough away that  
Chloe probably wouldn't see or hear him training.  
  
While on the way there, he made sure to grab a couple more bunches of  
grapes, popping them into his mouth and then spitting the seeds back out  
as he went. The ruins were a good twenty-minute walk away, and he  
managed to finish the grapes off before arriving.  
  
It was much bigger than he was expecting, and once he got there he could  
see that there was even more behind the coliseum, with rows of broken-  
columns following stone roadways to other buildings and areas.  
  
Ranma entered the coliseum and saw that the arena within had a number of  
broken and rusted weapons scattered about the sand of the fighting area.  
There were big bricks all over the place, as well, that had been stacked  
into miniature towers at one point but had since fallen with the passage  
of time. Looking at the stands that surrounded him, he couldn't even  
begin to guess how many people used to watch fights here.  
  
He carried a wooden post, one that he'd seen lying unused at the edge of  
the grape field, over to the center of the arena, then put it down and  
begun digging. He soon had a hole that was a couple of feet deep, which  
he put the end of the post into, then began refilling it with sand while  
holding his target steady with one hand. It wasn't as sturdy as he  
would have liked when he finished but it would hold well enough for  
throwing knives at, which was the whole point anyway.  
  
He backed away from the target until he was about the same distance he  
had been throwing earlier, then took the knives out of his pocket and  
tossed the first one, making sure to copy the movements he had seen  
Chloe using. The knife duplicated his first throw and hit the ground  
halfway between him and the post, the sand stopping it much more quickly  
than on the previous attempt.  
  
He tried again, then again and again and again, then went and picked  
them all up to start over. After about a half hour he had managed to  
get a few hit the target and actually stick, although none of them sunk  
very deeply into the wood, and those that weren't hitting were at least  
coming within a few feet of doing so.  
  
A couple of hours later he was hitting the target consistently, which  
was good because the post was smaller than the square board Chloe had  
been using for target practice, but he still hadn't managed to figure  
out how to get the knives to fly through the air properly, so that when  
they struck, they would be pointed blade-first. Instead, the knives  
were just as likely to hit with the base of the handle and then bounce  
back from the post without sticking.  
  
When he threw, the knife would spin through the air, flipping end over  
end before it hit, but when he had been watching Chloe, her knives had  
been unwavering as they sailed straight towards the target, sinking  
deeply into the bulls-eye of what she was throwing at. So what was the  
difference?  
  
Having stopped to try to figure out what the problem was, he finally  
noticed that it was beginning to get dark and the temperature was  
dropping. Ranma picked up the knives and slipped them back into his  
pocket, and then headed back towards the building they were staying at.  
He grabbed some more grapes on the way, hoping that what they had eaten  
earlier hadn't really been dinner, but some kind of late pre-dinner  
snack.  
  
  
Chloe watched silently as Ranma walked past her on his way to the Manor.  
She had noticed him spying on her earlier while she practiced and  
decided to follow him when he left, not expecting to see him begin  
teaching himself how to throw knives properly. At first she'd just been  
annoyed at his theft and had simply stayed where she was while trying to  
think of a proper method of punishing him for it, but by the time she  
had come up with a good solution she'd already seen a rather remarkable  
improvement on his part.  
  
So she stayed longer, and he kept getting better as she watched. The  
boy certainly wasn't as good as she was yet, but at his current rate of  
improvement it wouldn't be long before he got awfully close to being so.  
  
After waiting a few minutes to let Ranma get his distance, she left her  
hiding place in the stands and moved to follow. She remained at the  
exit until Ranma had gone out of sight over one of the hills on the way  
back to the Manor, and then started towards it herself. While she  
didn't really think it would matter if the boy found out she had been  
spying on him, she still preferred to not get caught at it. When she  
got to the top of the hill, she crouched down and crept forward to check  
his location, and saw that he was almost there.  
  
It was hard tell from this distance and in the fading light, but it  
looked like he was eating some of Artena's grapes. Surely even he  
couldn't be *that* rude, though, to steal food from his host just  
shortly after being fed.  
  
After he entered the Manor she stood back up and started walking towards  
it herself, looking for any evidence of what she both hoped he hadn't  
been doing and also hoped that he had, unable to figure out which would  
be better, for him to have not been eating Artena's grapes, or for him  
to have been doing so. The first would show that he was at least  
slightly respectful, and be the only sign of such a trait that she had  
seen so far, while the second would be something that she might be able  
to get him in trouble for.  
  
Chloe got past the grape fields and then to the Manor without finding  
any signs of Ranma's theft, but was still uncertain as to whether that  
was because he hadn't taken any grapes, or whether he had simply thrown  
the remains far enough away that she couldn't see them with it almost  
dark out. Somewhat disappointed, she entered the Manor and went looking  
for Artena, deciding to check the room the older woman wrote her letters  
in first.  
  
When she reached the room, she heard Artena say, "No, Ranma, we've  
already eaten dinner. You'll have to wait until tomorrow."  
  
"But you only gave me a bit of food! I'm still hungry!"  
  
Greedy fool.  
  
She stepped through the doorway and announced, as both of them turned to  
face her, "I'm done practicing, Artena-sama."  
  
Artena smiled at her. "Good. Are you going to get ready for bed?"  
  
"Yes, Artena-sama," Chloe replied, then noticed Ranma popping something  
into his mouth. She looked at him to see that he had the decimated  
remains of a grape bunch held in one hand, and a group of seeds held in  
the other.  
  
She found her hands balling into fists at her side, but still asked  
calmly, "Did you have fun playing with my dolls, Ranma?"  
  
His response was for his face to contort into an annoying smirk and say,  
"Yup! They were fun! Best dolls I ever played with!"  
  
She glared at him, fists shaking now. "I don't have any dolls."  
  
Ranma's smirk turned into a big grin. "You didn't mean these?" he  
asked, pulling her knives out of his pocket with the same hand he held  
the grape seeds in, smearing juice all over the polished metal. "You  
were playing with them earlier."  
  
"I wasn't *playing* with them, imbecile! They're not toys!" Chloe  
tried to snatch them from his hands, but he pulled away at the last  
instant.  
  
"Ah, wait!" he said, jumping back from her. "I'm not done playing with  
them yet!"  
  
Chloe reached into her cloak and grabbed at her knives, deciding to take  
advantage of Ranma's hands being full and kill him while she had the  
chance.  
  
"Chloe," said Artena, who was still sitting at her simple desk, "I'm  
going to show Ranma to his room, and then I'll be along to tuck you in."  
  
She stopped, her knives still in their harness, but continued to glare  
at Ranma, who was leaning back against the wall in a relaxed position  
and popping the last few grapes into his mouth. After a moment she  
turned to Artena.  
  
"Okay, Artena-sama. I'll go get ready," she said.  
  
Artena smiled at her. "It will just be a few minutes, Chloe."  
  
She nodded in response, then left for her room wishing that she really  
did have some dolls, because she felt the urgent need to stab something.  
  
When she got there, Chloe found that her bed had been moved back into  
its original position, either by Artena or by that annoying boy when he  
had been in her room stealing her knives. She hung her cloak and  
harnesses in her wardrobe and then took off the pants and shirt she had  
been wearing. She changed into another shirt, a much bigger one that  
she liked to sleep in, and got into bed.  
  
A half hour later she found herself to be nodding off. Usually Artena  
would come to tuck her in, then tell her a story. She'd then fall  
asleep to the sound of Artena's voice talking quietly right beside her.  
She enjoyed that.  
  
Chloe was really, really beginning to hate that boy, because she was  
sure that Artena's absence was all his fault.  
  
  
Ranma woke, blinking uncomfortably in the sunlight that shone upon him  
through the nearby window. He turned to the side to look away, then  
rubbed the crusty sleep out of his eyes. Yuck.  
  
He climbed out of bed and then looked out the window curiously. It was  
still bright, but his eyes were adjusting quickly, and he was able to  
note the position of the sun in the sky. It was much higher than it  
should have been.  
  
His stomach grumbled suspiciously.  
  
He left the room Artena had showed him to the previous night and went  
looking for the woman, hoping that she had something ready to eat.  
Usually Ranma wouldn't have breakfast immediately after waking up, but  
most mornings started out with sparring at dawn, which had been hours  
ago. His stomach was on a certain cycle of eat, empty quickly, eat  
again, and for some reason it had been disturbed this morning.  
  
After checking in the crude kitchen and dining room, he looked in the  
room that Artena had been writing in the day before. Once again, she  
was there, scrawling out the weird symbols of some other language.  
French, he guessed.  
  
"Hey," he asked, "when is breakfast?"  
  
Artena looked up at him, her pen stopping. "It was over two hours ago,  
Ranma. Lunch will be ready at noon."  
  
"What? Why didn't you wake me up?" he demanded. He was hungry!  
  
"I sent Chloe to get you up," she said. "She told me that you wouldn't  
wake, so we let you sleep. Chloe ate your breakfast for you, so the  
food wouldn't go to waste," she added, almost as an afterthought.  
  
"She ate *my* food?"  
  
Artena nodded slightly. "Yes."  
  
He was really beginning to hate that girl.  
  
Grumbling vague threats, he left Artena and headed outside, keeping an  
eye out for Chloe as he did so. Ranma didn't see her anywhere, but she  
doubted she was hiding from him. He walked to the coliseum again, more  
slowly this time to give him an opportunity to eat more grapes and fill  
his stomach as much as possible. Once there, he began practicing again,  
setting himself the same distance from the wooden post as before.  
  
After gathering the knives again for the umpteenth time, he stopped. He  
was doing something wrong. His throws, while hitting the target  
consistently now, seemed to be completely random as to which end the  
knives hit with: base or point. They were also spread out where they  
hit the board, more than he would have liked, anyway. That they were  
hitting it was an improvement but not enough of one to satisfy him, or  
to beat Chloe when he challenged her to a rematch.  
  
His right arm had gone beyond hurting some time ago. It felt heavy and  
awkward, and it was difficult to move it as adeptly as he normally  
could. There was an easy solution to this, however.  
  
Ranma switched hands and resumed throwing, this time starting over with  
his left. He did even worse than he had started out. He was right  
handed, and while he had in training become quite familiar with the use  
of his left arm, it was still a little bit less accurate, a little bit  
less comfortable to use. For what he was trying to do, that difference  
in performance made quite an impact.  
  
None of the knives hit the target. He kept trying, though, picking them  
up and then walking back to the throwing point and tossing again. By  
the time his left hand and arm were starting to hurt, to become even  
more clumsy in comparison, he was only able to hit the target about half  
of the time, and even then the knives were sinking into the wood at  
seemingly random points. One would hit near the base of the post,  
another near the top, a few in between. He just couldn't get them to  
group together at about the same height, those that didn't just sail  
past the post and into the sand beyond.  
  
Deciding that his left hand was becoming too tired to continue, he  
switched back to his right, which had had enough time to recover that he  
was able to throw effectively with it again.  
  
After letting one last knife fly, which missed as his arm was again  
feeling completely dead, he collapsed to the sand, lying on his back and  
looking up at the sky. Each arm lay parallel to his body and felt so  
heavy that they might have been of the sand beneath him rather than of  
flesh and blood. He would rest awhile, to recover, and then start  
again.  
  
So Ranma deliberately relaxed his muscles as much as he could, to the  
point where his arms started to hurt even more. He wasn't quite sure  
why that was, but it was something he had become familiar with, when he  
had the opportunity to relax after any kind of unfamiliar exercise that  
his father would put him through. He started with his arms, then worked  
his way to his other muscles just for practice, letting his whole body  
go as dead limp as he could cause it to. His arms, having had the most  
exercise, hurt the worst from it, but the rest of his body was  
uncomfortable, too.  
  
Satisfied that he was relaxed enough, he studied the few clouds that  
passed high above him. There was a light breeze, which brushed lightly,  
strangely ticklish against his skin, relaxed as he was, and it pushed  
the clouds slowly past. The sky darkened slightly as one passed across  
the sun, and the temperature dropped slightly with the sudden lack of  
direct warmth.  
  
As he stared up at the partially obscured star, he noted its position.  
It was after noon, by an hour or two.  
  
"Dammit!"  
  
Ignoring his hollow stomach, which his noticing the time had called  
attention to, he wondered what it was that he was doing wrong. As far  
as he could tell, he was throwing the knives in the same way that Chloe  
had, so he should be able to hit the target perfectly. That he wasn't  
meant that there was still something he was doing wrong. So what was  
it?  
  
After thinking about it for a while, he still couldn't figure out what  
the problem was, and his stomach was beginning to get more insistent, so  
he stood up and brushed off the little bit of sand that had stuck to his  
back and head. Then he went and got a few more bunches of grapes before  
heading back to the coliseum, eating them as he walked.  
  
Once he finished eating, he started practicing again. His technique was  
flawed somewhere, and he wasn't going to quit until he'd figured it out.  
  
The next time he stopped, this time completely exhausted and barely able  
to move his arms with any real dexterity at all, was when it was getting  
too dark to see the post. He had never gotten substantially better--the  
whole day had been, for the most part, a waste of time. Throwing with  
his left hand had become slightly more accurate but still not even to  
the mediocre level that his right was at. His right hadn't improved at  
all.  
  
After spending a few minutes finding the knives, none of which had hit  
because of the low lighting and his dead arms, he set off towards the  
Manor.  
  
  
Chloe was full. Incredibly so. She felt slow, sluggish, and she  
definitely did not want to be involved in a fight in her current state.  
Ranma's not being here, of course, meant that she wouldn't. It was also  
the cause for her stomach protruding so obviously. She could actually  
see where the food had caused her to expand, a lump in her middle being  
easily visible.  
  
Regardless, she was quite happy. Ranma had missed dinner. He'd also  
missed breakfast and lunch. That meant he should be starving. Even if  
Ranma had eaten a few of Artena's grapes, damn his rudeness, he would  
still be disappointed when he showed up to find a lack of food waiting  
upon his arrival.  
  
Assuming he showed up at all, anyway.  
  
She'd gone to the coliseum a couple of times during the day, being quiet  
and careful as to not alert Ranma to her presence, and watched him  
practice for a while. His attitude towards the knife throwing had  
changed completely from what it had been before. Previously, he had  
been calm, methodically throwing the knives and judging the results,  
using small variations on the movements involved in order to refine and  
improve his skill. Today, however, he had been acting quite frustrated;  
throwing the knives harder than necessary, not aiming as carefully as he  
had before, and muttering curses regularly. Ranma hadn't improved  
substantially, either, unlike the day before, despite his spending much  
more time at it.  
  
Chloe herself hadn't been able to do more than low-level practicing,  
just using her right arm, since she wasn't able to stress her body too  
much. Her wounds were healing quickly and there was a significant  
amount of improvement after only three days, but she still had to be  
careful to keep from making her injuries worse. So instead, she had  
spent much of her time in one of the sitting rooms, reading, completing  
most of 'Alice in Wonderland' that day alone. There weren't many books  
at the Manor, but she was able to borrow others, like she had that one,  
whenever she went into the village. The villagers were always eager to  
please her.  
  
She wasn't sure what alerted her, but Chloe looked up from her book and  
over to the doorway. Ranma stood there, looking at her with an odd  
expression on his face. She wasn't quite sure what to make of it. Was  
he going to ask about dinner?  
  
"You look like a pregnant cow," he said. "Maybe you should start eating  
less."  
  
Before she could respond, he stepped away and was gone.  
  
"Jerk."  
  
  
The next morning Ranma made it to breakfast, and ate just as quickly and  
noisily as he'd done the first time he was fed. As soon as he finished  
he left without a word of thanks to Artena, or even bothering to wait  
until they had eaten their own meals. They continued in silence for  
several minutes before Artena spoke.  
  
"Are you going to go see what he's doing again today, Chloe?" she asked.  
  
Chloe finished chewing and swallowed. "Yes, Artena-sama. I don't  
expect him to improve much if he's still acting like he did yesterday,  
though."  
  
Artena nodded, and Chloe wondered why the older woman was so interested  
in the boy's training. Ranma would be gone soon, so why did it matter  
to her? That he could avoid Chloe's knives certainly indicated his  
skill, even if she was injured at the time, but that shouldn't have any  
importance to Artena, except perhaps in that Ranma might be a threat.  
If he was a threat, he should be killed. Chloe would do it, if Artena  
allowed her to. If she could, which she wasn't sure about in her  
partially healed state.  
  
Chloe paced herself so that she finished eating at the same time as  
Artena, and when Artena said nothing, Chloe thanked her for the meal and  
went to her room. After putting on her harnesses and cloak and making  
sure that all her knives were accessible, Chloe left the Manor and  
headed to the coliseum again.  
  
On the way, she spotted a number of grape seeds lying scattered across  
the ground. That boy was definitely trying to annoy her.  
  
When she arrived, she was careful to make no sound, slipping through one  
of the huge arching doorways that so many people had once passed  
through, so very long ago. Now, she entered alone, and the only  
participant in the games was a young boy her own age. Chloe wondered  
what the girl would think of Ranma, not that they were likely to ever  
meet. No doubt she would be more than a match for him. Chloe herself  
was certainly less skilled, more hesitant to strike, than that girl was.  
  
Inside, instead of throwing knives, Ranma was running through various  
kata. She assumed them to be from his family school, which he had  
mentioned when he introduced himself in such a rude fashion after waking  
up sane two days previously. He jumped about on the sand, throwing  
punches and kicks and twirling around to strike at imaginary opponents  
in all directions. The sand underneath him, mostly hard like everywhere  
else in the coliseum, was beginning to break up, becoming loose under  
the repeated impacts and Ranma's shifting weight.  
  
Ranma wasn't, by any stretch of the imagination, the best she has seen.  
She herself had had a number of instructors, teaching her knife-throwing  
and how to fight barehanded, with swords, spears, and a number of other  
weapons. Every lethal weapon she could conceivably be taught with had  
been trained into her to some degree, to the point where she could now  
use almost anything, no matter how innocent in purpose, to kill people.  
Her instructors, however, had still been better in their specific fields  
than she was. Being able to recognize that difference in skill also  
allowed her to realize that Ranma was better at unarmed combat than she  
was, enough so that even if she was healed, she didn't think she could  
kill him except by surprise.  
  
She wasn't sure what his capabilities were, though. As he danced back  
and forth across the arena, leaping from place to place as he went, she  
noted that he wasn't jumping near as high or easily as he had when they  
arrived at the Manor. His jumps, while impressive for a boy his age,  
weren't at the same extreme as his jumping fifteen feet into the air as  
he had done previously. The effort he was putting into his practice was  
easily visible, he was sweating profusely, making small grunting noises  
before pushing himself into the air, sometimes a bit clumsily and  
landing with awkwardness, and the difference made her wonder if there  
was more to the feline behavior he had at first exhibited than his  
simply acting as a cat. The physical abilities he had shown before  
weren't present now. Why?  
  
By now, Ranma was taking big, gulping breaths, his actions had slowed  
down, and it was clear that he was soon to stop. She watched silently,  
and several minutes later, he did, and she could see that he was  
literally shaking with the effort he'd just put himself through. Rather  
than taking a break to recover, however, Ranma walked over to the post  
he'd been using as a target for the past two days, picked up the knives  
he had placed there, then moved to about thirty feet away.  
  
Taking a deep breath and then releasing it slowly, he threw the first  
knife, and Chloe tracked it through the air as it sailed towards the  
post--and then passed it.  
  
"Shit!"  
  
Ranma took another breath, held himself still for a moment, and then  
threw the next knife. It hit the target, but base-first instead of  
point, and it bounced and fell to the ground. The next knife hit the  
post as well, this time correctly, and stuck with the blade sunk into  
the wood by about half an inch, as best Chloe could tell.  
  
Half an inch really wasn't enough, she knew. The blades were four  
inches long, the handle the same length. That was enough to kill  
somebody if the knife hit in the right location, but a half inch  
wouldn't do more than irritate and cause some hesitation or panic in the  
target. That could be effective, but it was still better to simply kill  
the person, instead.  
  
The next knife hit a few inches away from the previous one, this time  
penetrating twice as deep. An inch still wasn't enough. The fifth  
knife clipped the top of the post and then flipped end-over-end until it  
landed in the sand several feet beyond.  
  
Ranma stood still for a minute, fists clenching at his sides, then  
relaxed slightly and breathed out. Then he went and picked up the  
knives, easily jerking free the two embedded into the post, and went  
back to his throwing position. He started over.  
  
Three of the knives hit and stuck this time, the other two bouncing off  
after hitting with the knives hit wrong. Of the next five, only one  
throw was successful, and the five after that, two. In the next set,  
none.  
  
Ranma continued to get more and more erratic in his throws, repeating  
his mistakes of the day before, until eventually Chloe couldn't even  
consider what he was doing to be practice. He wasn't at all in control  
of himself, and the way his knives were missing was a clear indication  
of that. What was the problem? He was obviously capable, physically,  
of throwing better, his quick improvement of two days before showed  
that, yet his current performance was simply abysmal.  
  
Deciding that she was wasting her time, Chloe backed away from her  
observation point carefully, until there was no chance that Ranma could  
see her if he happened to look in her direction, then turned and walked  
back towards the Manor. If she and Ranma were to go into the village  
and get him some more clothes the next day, then she wanted to finish  
her book so that she could return it in exchange for something else.  
  
  
By the time lunch was ready, Chloe had finished her book and found  
herself with nothing to do, so she decided to help Artena by setting the  
table. Putting the silverware and dishes out, she wondered if Ranma  
would show up today, or if, like yesterday, he would continue  
practicing. By the time she went back into the kitchen to help bring  
the food in, however, Ranma had arrived. Rather than helping, he simply  
sat down and waited for the food to be delivered. Chloe noticed that  
his hands had dirt on them, which he hadn't bothered to wash off.  
  
Once they sat down and started to eat, Artena asked, "Ranma, are you  
still playing with Chloe's knives?"  
  
Startled, Chloe looked at her, and then over at Ranma, who smirked back.  
  
  
"Yeah," he said. "They're a lot of fun!"  
  
"I've seen your target. It's not getting much use," Chloe shot back.  
  
Ranma reddened at that and opened his mouth to retort, but Artena beat  
him to it.  
  
"Ranma, I'm going to send Chloe into the village with you tomorrow to  
pick up more clothes. You're going to be here a bit longer and I don't  
want you to keep wearing those every day."  
  
"Hey!" he said. "I ain't staying much longer, and these clothes are  
just fine! I don't need no more!"  
  
Artena sighed. "They're getting dirty and you can't just keep borrowing  
Chloe's outfits all the time when those need to be washed. And you will  
be staying until I can locate your father, which may not be for another  
week or maybe longer."  
  
Ranma looked down, obviously inspecting his garments, which had sand  
stuck to them in some places, and sweat stains in others. Chloe was  
sure that would make a mess of his bed sheets, if he hadn't already done  
so the night before.  
  
"Fine," he said, after a few moments. "I don't need HER to go with me,  
though. Just tell me where it is, and I'll make the trip alone."  
  
"Do you know French?" asked Chloe, pausing with a forkful of food  
halfway to her mouth.  
  
Ranma glared at her.  
  
"The people in the village don't speak Japanese, you know," she  
continued. "You'd just wander into town and start speaking gibberish,  
and they'd look at you like you were mad. Then you'd probably try to  
steal some poor woman's clothes and get shot for it."  
  
"I would not!" Ranma burst out.  
  
Chloe just smirked, and resumed eating.  
  
"I wouldn't!" he insisted.  
  
"Chloe will go with you," Artena said again.  
  
Ranma grumbled under his breath in response, but did so quietly, and  
Chloe kept eating her meal with silent satisfaction, although she felt a  
trace of regret as well. Chloe wished that Ranma had refused to go  
along with her; in that case, Artena would have had her pick up some  
clothes for him, which she would have been delighted to do. Most of the  
villagers wore simple attire, however, and she wouldn't have been able  
to get anything too embarrassing for him. But she could have tried.  
  
Once Ranma stopped muttering what Chloe didn't doubt were comments about  
her, he quickly tore through his meal, finishing before she or Artena  
were even close to being done. Having completed, he stood and stepped  
away from the table.  
  
"I'm gonna go play with Chloe's knives some more," he announced, a smile  
pasted on his face as he moved towards the door.  
  
Chloe waited until he'd already exited the dining room and she could  
hear Ranma walking away, then called out, "Try not to hurt yourself!"  
  
When she heard the boy miss a step, she grinned over at Artena, who  
looked back calmly, her lips curved slightly upwards. Apparently Ranma  
couldn't think of a response very quickly, however, and he kept going  
after that brief pause. Chloe sighed happily. Life was good.  
  
"He's going to try to get back at you for that, you know," Artena said,  
still smiling.  
  
Chloe nodded in response. She expected that the boy would attempt to  
retaliate in some way, but she was sure she'd be able to handle it. She  
was Noir.  
  
Chloe ate a few bites more of her meal, then asked, "Artena-sama, do you  
think Ranma will start trying harder, now that he knows you've been  
watching him?"  
  
"Maybe, Chloe. If he did, would it matter?"  
  
"...No."  
  
She was Noir. Someone like Ranma could be a challenge, but she would  
always come out on top. For Artena, and for that girl, she would  
eliminate or overrun all obstacles.  
  
"No, it wouldn't."  
  
"Good."  
  
She was Noir. Which meant that she was going to have to figure out a  
way to beat Ranma in more than a simple knife-throwing competition. She  
might be able to nail him with her knives, once her left arm finished  
healing and she was able to use it properly, but there wasn't any way to  
be sure without testing it. The easiest solution she could think of was  
to kill Ranma while he was asleep. Greater skill meant nothing in the  
face of willingness to make use of all means necessary. The best  
solution, however, would be for her to improve to the point where  
surprise was no longer necessary. But how long would that take?  
Certainly more time than Ranma would remain at the Manor for.  
  
So. If Artena allowed her to, Chloe would kill Ranma while he was  
sleeping. Then she would train until, if Ranma had been present or  
alive, she would have been able to kill him without the boy's abilities  
being handicapped in such a manner.  
  
"Chloe?"  
  
She looked up, and saw that Artena had finished eating and was looking  
at her in concern. Chloe smiled. "Sorry, Artena-sama. I was  
thinking." She quickly started in at her food again, cursing her  
absent-mindedness.  
  
"I see," said Artena, before she went silent.  
  
Over the next few minutes, Chloe was very self-conscious of the scraping  
and clicking noises the silverware made against her plate. She ate  
quickly, but carefully, and she didn't look up as she chewed. Instead  
she kept an eye on her quickly diminishing food, until it was gone.  
Finished, she raised her head, and saw Artena smile at her. She smiled  
back, relieved that Artena wasn't angry with her for becoming  
distracted.  
  
"Would you like to take a bath today, Chloe?"  
  
"Yes!" she said, happily, and Artena gave her another smile.  
  
"Very well. Let's clean the dishes, and then we'll go to the hot  
springs."  
  
Chloe jumped to her feet, almost knocking her chair over, and began  
taking the dishes into the kitchen. It'd been a while since Artena had  
given her a bath.  
  
  
Chloe stepped into the steaming water carefully, not wanting to slip  
this close to the edge of the hot spring. Breaking her head open wasn't  
something she wanted. The hot water, calm and unmoving, crept up her  
legs as she walked forward, the submerged areas of her body feeling  
disjointed, almost cut off from the rest of her. But pleasantly so.  
She continued until she was deep enough, then ducked her head under the  
water and held herself still for half a minute, relaxing in the  
comforting heat that surrounded her completely. With a sigh, she stood  
again, and this time it was the revealed portions of her body that felt  
uncomfortable, like they'd just been ripped from the womb and wanted  
nothing but to return to their previous warmth.  
  
"You enjoy this too much, you know. I might have to begin rationing  
your baths out more carefully."  
  
She turned and looked guiltily towards Artena. "I like the heat," she  
confessed. "Almost hot enough to hurt, but not quite. It feels good."  
  
The older woman nodded, stepping into the pool herself. Rather than  
moving further out into the water, however, Artena settled down onto one  
of the steps. Her hair was bound up safely to keep it from getting wet,  
though she was submerged up to her upper chest. She leaned back against  
the edge of the pool, and Chloe could see Artena roll her shoulders.  
Maybe they were slightly stiff from spending time at her desk, writing  
letters.  
  
Chloe also noticed the effect those movements had on Artena's body.  
Artena was so pretty; Chloe hoped that she could look like that when she  
was older. That was a ways off, and for now, it was unimportant.  
Still, Artena was her ultimate goal. She wanted to be as good as that  
girl was, true, and wanted to live up to the expectations that were held  
for those who were Noir, but what she desired after that was to be like  
Artena. Beautiful, intelligent, and kind. So very kind.  
  
While Artena took a few minutes to relax, Chloe moved about in the  
deeper area of the spring. The floor where she was at was very hot,  
where the water leaked up through the rocks beneath, so she was careful  
to keep treading water rather than letting herself settle down into it.  
The water was deep enough that she had a foot or two of freedom to move  
around in, which was plenty as long as she didn't forget where she was.  
  
The temperature was higher, here in the middle of the spring. It was  
borderline intolerable, and as Chloe moved about, arms and legs passing  
through the water, each motion was accompanied by a surge of heat  
running across her body. The air she breathed in was hot, her lungs  
feeling a touch scorched as she inhaled. Her body felt heavy on the  
exhalations, sinking into the water. She closed her eyes, sleepy.  
  
"Chloe!"  
  
She turned her head to the side, somewhat dizzily. She was so hot. It  
felt good. What was wrong? Her breath came in short gasps. "Artena-  
sama?" Where was she?  
  
The heat felt different now, lesser. She was moving through the water  
again. Hadn't she stopped?  
  
#####  
  
End for now. 


	2. part 3

The heat felt different now, lesser. She was moving through the water  
again. Hadn't she stopped? Her arms, legs, were limp, but she could  
feel water passing over them, over the rest of her body.  
  
She tried to slow her breathing, but it was hard. There was something  
across her chest, preventing her from breathing deeply. It was one of  
Artena's arms, she realized, and she was being pulled.  
  
The water was cooler. She shivered at the change in temperature,  
uncomfortable. But Artena was holding onto her. Artena was warm, too,  
she could feel, now that Chloe noticed she was pressed up against the  
older woman, being held carefully in place as she was dragged towards  
the edge of the spring. But Artena still wasn't as warm as the water  
had been.  
  
Chloe felt herself being lifted and was shocked at the sudden coldness.  
The abrupt transition caused her to shiver uncontrollably in Artena's  
careful grasp. She was out of the pool now and being carried, held  
closely against her surrogate mother. Artena was warm where they  
touched each other, but Chloe was still freezing, the cool air ripping  
away even that comforting heat.  
  
She stared at her fingers in sick fascination. They looked pink, redder  
than usual, but she was sure they'd turn blue and black at any moment as  
the blood within thickened and slowed and turned to ice. Her toes and  
feet would, too. But no matter how closely she looked, they remained  
the same.  
  
Chloe wrapped her arms around Artena, clinging to the older woman, who  
was trying to put her down. She refused to let go. Artena was warm.  
"Artena-sama?" she murmured.  
  
She heard a slight sigh, the exhalation brushing against one of her  
ears. A moment later Artena sat down, carefully keeping Chloe in her  
lap. Chloe smiled slightly and relaxed her grip, resting her head  
against Artena. She felt hands begin to run softly through her hair.  
She liked that, it was nice.  
  
"Sleep, Chloe," she heard. "We have plenty of time still."  
  
  
Ranma lied on his back, chest heaving and limbs stretched out in all  
directions. He gulped down great big lungfuls of replenishing oxygen,  
his heart slammed in his chest and his blood through the rushing rapids  
that were his veins. He was covered in sweat, his eyes stinging  
slightly at the saturated moisture, the taste of it upon his lips. The  
clothes he wore clung wetly, uncomfortable, heavy with his fluids,  
stained through with his salt.  
  
The oh-so-strenuous workout had accomplished nothing. Ranma was no  
closer to figuring out what his problem was than before. His throws  
were still completely off. His mood was frustrated and irritable; he  
was easily distracted and his wandering mind kept returning to the  
question of what he was doing wrong rather than simply focusing on  
practice as it should. His father had trained him just as hard as this  
on previous occasions and Ranma had had no such problems. Usually he'd  
already have gotten a solid, sometimes near-perfect grasp on whatever  
the technique was by this point--Ranma had been trying to learn knife-  
throwing for four days with no significant progress. Why?  
  
His breathing began to slow as his body cooled down, no longer required  
to run like an overworked steamboat boiler. The heart slowed, its beats  
becoming less the pounding of a fleet of drummers and instead a slow,  
easy pace, eventually inaudible. Ranma's muscles, previously masses of  
well-done, cooked beef, changed to the sleepy lethargy of a lazy young  
calf.  
  
Ranma's eyes glided across the sky until he looked upon the brightly  
shining sun. Just a couple of hours after noon. He had plenty of time  
before dinner. Plenty of time to get more practicing in, to figure out  
what his problem was. Plenty of time.  
  
  
"Ranma."  
  
He opened his eyes to see that the sun had moved unexpectedly and that  
it was now late in the afternoon. Ranma blinked again, but this time it  
stayed still. How odd.  
  
"Ranma," said a quiet voice.  
  
He stretched, curling his feet and balling his fists as he pushed them  
as far apart as he could. Breathing out in a sleepy sigh, his eyes  
clenched shut again. He felt his muscles ripple deliciously as he did  
so, bringing a smile to his face. That always felt good. He peeked  
upwards to find that nothing had changed. Then he sat up and saw that  
Artena was standing in front of him.  
  
Her hair was damp and dark and uncombed, no longer hanging straight at  
her back with any available illumination making her light-brown tresses  
shine. In Artena's arms Chloe slumbered, her torso wrapped around with  
towels, the girl's arms draped over Artena's shoulders and her head  
resting against one side of Artena's neck. Chloe's hair, too, was wet,  
the normally fluffy reddish-purple substance instead pressed closely to  
her scalp.  
  
Ranma stood and yawned, stretching his arms upwards this time as if to  
grab at nonexistent clouds. When finished, he looked towards Artena  
again. She was still standing there holding Chloe.  
  
"What?" he asked.  
  
Artena leaned backwards, changing the position of Chloe's weight upon  
her, and adjusted one of her arms under the girl to better support her  
weight. With her other hand, which had been pressed against Chloe's  
back, Artena held some clothes out towards him.  
  
"Please carry these," she said, in the same low tone of voice.  
  
Ranma looked at them for a minute, then up at Artena, who simply smiled  
at him, holding Chloe's weight steady with no apparent trouble while  
using only one arm. He shrugged and took the clothes from her grasp.  
"Okay."  
  
"Thank you."  
  
Artena adjusted her grip on Chloe again, this time able to use both  
hands to hold the girl up. The position looked more comfortable, but  
Ranma couldn't help but wonder if it had been necessary since Artena  
hadn't seemed to be having any trouble to begin with.  
  
"If you'll come with me back to the Manor," Artena said, "dinner will be  
ready soon."  
  
Ranma yawned again then nodded, and Artena started walking towards the  
arena exit. He followed, trudging slowly through the sand. Chloe's  
face peeked at him from over Artena's shoulder, but her eyes remained  
closed. Her face was flushed and pink, for some reason.  
  
He looked down at the clothes he now held. They were Chloe's, and what  
she had been wearing earlier that day. Where had they gone swimming?  
He'd have to search the area around the coliseum later on, to see. He  
liked swimming.  
  
For now, though, Ranma followed Artena back to the Manor. Swimming  
could wait until later.  
  
  
Dinner was quiet. Ranma, still nappish, ate his food slowly, without  
effort. His lack of real hunger or enthusiasm caused the meal to be  
bland and tasteless. Picking at it was about the limit of his energy.  
He had no doubt that if his father was present he would not be able to  
eat even the slightest bit of the food on his plate. Ranma just wasn't  
up to holding a defense right now.  
  
Chloe, too, was quiet and subdued. Her face was still pink and her  
motions drowsy and slow as she slowly used her fork to break up her food  
before sending it to the abyss one tiny load at a time. Even the  
clicking of silverware on plate was dull and muted.  
  
Deciding he'd had enough, Ranma push his chair back and rose to leave.  
  
"It's your turn to help with the dishes, Ranma," Artena said.  
  
"...What?"  
  
"Somebody needs to dry and put away the dishes as I clean them."  
  
Ranma stared at her. "Have Chloe do it."  
  
"Chloe has been helping me in the kitchen even though she's injured.  
Now it's your turn."  
  
"But you're making me stay here! I shouldn't have to help!"  
  
"That doesn't matter. You should still make yourself of some  
assistance. And I'm not forcing you to stay. You can leave at any  
time, even if you don't know where to go."  
  
"That's not fair!" he protested. He hated doing dishes!  
  
"I'll do it," Chloe said quietly, speaking for the first time since  
dinner began.  
  
Artena frowned and started to speak, but Ranma beat her to it.  
  
"Okay, Chloe will help you! I'mgoingtobednowgoodnight!"  
  
He ran away as quickly as possible.  
  
After he had turned a couple of corners he slowed back down to a  
lethargic, dragging walk, once again drained of energy. Even his room  
seemed like a long trek. Maybe once he got back to Japan he could make  
his father teach him some kinda teleporting technique, like in that  
Dragonball manga.  
  
Ranma was sure that'd be easier to learn those stupid knives, too.  
  
He didn't mind doing chores, at least some stuff. Setting and packing  
up his and his father's tents, making a fire, scrounging for food and  
then helping cook it, those were all things he had to do whenever they  
went on the road. He hated the boredom and senselessness of the  
repetition but knew it was necessary. And his father always did his  
share of those tasks.  
  
Cleaning dishes, though, was a chore Ranma absolutely detested, and one  
that he'd always get stuck doing himself. When they were staying  
somewhere Ranma would arrive home after school to find a massive amount  
of dishes scattered across the kitchen counters and dining room table.  
Every day. Even when he washed the dishes before heading to school, and  
his father both left for work before Ranma exited the house and arrived  
home hours after Ranma himself returned, there would still be dishes  
delivered by a mysterious grunge fairy that Ranma could never seem to  
spot.  
  
When they were on the road for a training trip Ranma and his father  
would end up trying to steal each other's food until it was gone or  
scattered about their campgrounds. Afterwards the battle would move on  
to a full-fledged sparring session that gave plenty of time for the  
leftover bits of food to fuse completely with the plates and cooking  
utensils they remained on. Trying to scrub dishes clean in the always-  
cold water of a nearby stream or pond, or worse, having to use a canteen  
or some other kind of water bottle that made rinsing almost impossible,  
was a hell Ranma was quite familiar with.  
  
So no, he wasn't doing dishes. Not a chance in the world.  
  
What he was going to do was sleep. Arriving at last at the room he was  
a guest in he collapsed onto the bed, and, ignoring the dirty sheets and  
the sand stuck to his clothes and hair and skin, he did just that.  
  
  
"Wake up."  
  
Ranma eyes opened stickily and he blinked, trying to figure out what the  
problem was.  
  
"OW!"  
  
He started rubbing at his eyes carefully, moisture running from them now  
after the sand got in. There was gunk all in the corners, stuck to his  
eyelashes, rusting his doors to the world shut. Cleaning it out wasn't  
pleasant.  
  
"Are you done yet?" Chloe asked quietly.  
  
Ranma finished and looked over at the girl. She was dressed again in  
clothes similar to his, but hers were noticeably cleaner, and there was  
a distinct lack of sand and dirt stuck to them. Chloe stood patiently,  
looking at him calmly, but he was sure there was something dismissive,  
condescending, about her deigning to wait for him.  
  
"What?" he asked. This was the first time she'd ever bothered to wake  
him up in the morning. "Is it time for breakfast?"  
  
"Yes. Artena-sama is waiting."  
  
Ranma shoved himself out of bed. Sand and dirt fell to the stone  
beneath him, grinding painfully under his toes and heel. He ignored it.  
  
Chloe turned away and exited the room, and he followed her.  
  
Breakfast was simple, same as it was every morning. Artena cooked for  
the purpose of satisfying stomachs, not greedy taste buds. Even Ranma's  
father spent more time than she did in preparing a meal. But it tasted  
well enough despite that and it filled him up just as he liked his food  
to do, even if he would have liked more than what she gave him.  
  
Once again his plate was clean and his glass empty before Chloe and  
Artena were even halfway done with theirs. Today he was going to the  
village, though, which meant he couldn't just leave--he didn't know  
where to go. So he continued to sit there and watched the two of them  
eat. Neither seemed to notice him doing so, or care. They just used  
their forks to separate a bit of food and then scooped the stuff up and  
lifted it into their mouths. Repeat, repeat, repeat. So slowly.  
  
Ranma wished his father was present. He would have ended up hungrier  
for it but at least the meal would have gone faster, taking place during  
a chopsticks duel that was the trademark of Saotome eating. He could  
try to steal food from Chloe or Artena, but he was sure it wouldn't work  
out. Forks just weren't designed properly for the quick, unnoticed  
theft that would be required.  
  
The clicking of silverware on china came to an end, the sudden silence  
catching his attention. They were done at last.  
  
"Ranma," said Artena, who was looking at him now. He noticed that Chloe  
was, too, and that the hint of a smug smile twisted her lips and colored  
her eyes.  
  
"What?" he asked, a bit suspicious.  
  
"Chloe will take you to the village to get some new clothes," she  
continued. Her face was serious now, none of the friendly warmth she  
had looked at him with before present. "Somebody there will give you  
some food. After that you are free to go wherever you wish, as long as  
you don't return here or bother the people in the village."  
  
Ranma stared at her, his heart thumping audibly in panic. He didn't  
know how to get to Japan! She said he'd help him! "You told me I could  
stay here until you found my pop! You lied to me!" Ranma yelled at her.  
  
Chloe gripped her knife tightly, glaring at him, the soiled, dull blade  
pointed in his direction but her fist surrounding it stayed at table  
level, in a neutral position. He ignored her.  
  
Artena didn't deny his words at all. "Yes, I said you could stay here.  
But I never invited you to come to this place, never invited you to show  
up requiring food and clothing and expecting a made bed and someone to  
pick up after you as though it is your right to be here. You are owed  
nothing. I have no obligation towards you, to put up with an unruly,  
ungrateful houseguest. I have every right to ask you to leave."  
  
Ranma looked from the cold expression on Artena's face over to the  
mostly happy, somewhat angered expression on Chloe's, then back again.  
"You're going to make me leave because I wouldn't do the dishes?"  
  
"Yes," Artena said.  
  
"Fine, then! I will leave! And I'll leave right now!"  
  
He stood, his knees thrusting backwards and knocking down the heavy  
chair. Then he marched to and out the door to the dining room, down the  
hallway leading to the front exit, and then outside.  
  
Ranma stopped in front of the opening, the grape fields sprawling out  
before him, hills and mountains within his view in all directions, the  
sky blue and cloudless and the sun marching across the horizon, and  
tried to figure out which way to Japan. No heading seemed obvious.  
  
Chloe's voice came from the dining room, saying something to Artena that  
he couldn't make out, and he scowled. Very well. Any direction would  
do.  
  
He started walking south.  
  
  
Then sun was directly above by the time he cleared the hills and started  
working his way into the rockier, more jagged upthrusts that lay beyond.  
He was glad for it, because it was just a little bit windier out here  
with no real shelter. The relatively motionless air inside the coliseum  
and Manor had been chilly enough to make his skin feel a touch cold, yet  
out in the open the air was constantly in motion, waves of coolness  
making the chill a little bit more insistent, a little bit more than  
skin-deep.  
  
It made him glad that he wasn't wearing his torn gi anymore, with the  
gaping holes leaving large areas of his chest and back and sides and  
legs uncovered and exposed to the elements. Girl clothes or not, being  
covered with even a small amount of overall insulation really did help.  
  
His feet, however, were nowhere near comfortable. They were colder than  
the rest of him, as he stepped over and onto sharp-edged rocks that had  
been sitting out in the wind all day, and felt like they'd spent days,  
not hours, being ground under a millstone. Each time he put a foot down  
a new rock would join its brothers and sisters in the assault, trying to  
find another chink in the armor, to work its way in deeper and more  
painfully than any had before. Ranma was beginning to hate those rocks,  
but stomping on them in revenge was out of the question.  
  
"This sucks," he said to himself, keeping his eyes on the ground  
immediately before him. Careful steps seemed to help somewhat, if not  
enough. Sometimes he could go a few paces in a row without his feet  
have to leave the patches of dark, hard, flat earth that were spread  
thinly among the rock fields. But not often.  
  
Was this the way to Japan? He couldn't tell. He could turn around and  
see the Manor from where he was, he'd climbed high enough that he cold  
peek over the hills between his present location and the place that had  
been a temporary home only earlier that morning. The Manor was a tiny  
thing from this distance, the coliseum being bigger but not that much.  
It was almost a half a day's travel, now.  
  
By the end of the day he should be twice as far. How far was that?  
What lay on the other side of the mountains he was trying to pass over?  
The village Artena and Chloe had talked about couldn't be too far away-  
-maybe he could see it when he got to the top of this peak? That was  
just a couple more hours away.  
  
Ranma clenched a fist around the knives in his pocket. He'd tried to  
juggle them a little bit earlier, while walking, wanting to keep  
handling the things, increasing his familiarity with the tools even  
though he'd never see Chloe again to get a chance to beat her. It  
hadn't worked, he kept getting too focused on tossing the knives around,  
catching and flipping and throwing them back up again, and then he'd  
step on a rock and suddenly lose his rhythm, knives falling everywhere,  
right by his face, right by his toes. So he'd stopped.  
  
Now the sun was overhead and looking up at the knives, if he tried it  
now, would probably cause one to fall into his squinting eyes.  
  
Instead he studied the ground, searching for particularly vicious  
looking rocks that would not take being trampled upon lightly. There  
were many of those, and he was quite sure that he was finding each one.  
  
  
Ranma looked south and concluded that maybe this was the wrong way to  
go. He'd already been traveling for six hours and the village wasn't  
just on the other side of this peak, as he had hoped. The trip was only  
supposed to take a bit over half a day, which meant that whichever  
direction the village was from the Manor, it wasn't south.  
  
The other directions he couldn't see very far in. East and west both  
had treacherous looking mini-mountains of their own to stand against  
him. If either of those were the right way to go, he couldn't tell from  
here with his view blocked. North lead right back to the Manor, and if  
the village was in that direction he didn't want to go there anyway.  
Ranma couldn't tell where Japan was, relative to him, but he knew it  
wasn't north--it was already colder here than it had been in Japan. No,  
north wasn't the way to go.  
  
East or west it was, then. And that meant he was going to have to head  
back to the Manor, which he'd been traveling away from for a good six or  
seven hours.  
  
"Dammit!"  
  
Ignoring the cold pit in his stomach and the loudly protesting,  
slaughtered remains of his feet, he turned around and started retracing  
his footsteps. Surely those rocks would be a bit softer this time  
around. His feet were.  
  
  
His feet, formerly cold and abused, were now masses of over-tenderized  
meat that had been left in the refrigerator for too long. They weren't  
blue, not really, but they definitely weren't the healthy looking color  
they had started out being. At least, he didn't think so. It was hard  
to tell, when his ability to see color had passed away with the sun who  
sponsored that ability.  
  
He couldn't quite tell what color they were, because he couldn't quite  
see very well of anything. He'd reached the little hills surrounding  
the Manor but they, too, had plenty of rocks strewn about, hiding  
beneath the sparse, mostly dead grass. By that time it had gotten  
fairly close to being dark. The sun had gone down and the moon was  
missing its shift.  
  
Ranma was a couple of hours from the nearest source of food, the grapes  
he'd been stuffing himself on so freely over the past few days, he had  
nothing to sleep in or on, and his feet were no doubt an ugly color  
underneath the monotone shading everything took on at this part of the  
evening.  
  
He laid down on the dead grass and tucked his feet as best he could into  
the pant legs that they didn't quite fit in, curled himself up into a  
ball, and tried not to think about how long it was until morning.  
  
It was a long, long time.  
  
  
He shivered, the rocks below him digging their way into his flesh like a  
fleet of assorted-sized drill bits, spinning madly. His hands were  
cold, and his feet, too, the temperature having dropped with the sun  
hours and hours ago. The warmth had quickly drained out of him, seeping  
into the ground and fading into the needy air, each puff of exhaled heat  
abandoning Ranma for greener pastures.  
  
It started at the roof of his ceiling, the black turning to a dark and  
then gradually lighter shade of blue. The barely-remembered hills  
around him took on definition, separating themselves from the sky as  
color began to trickle over the edge of the world in a slow flood. Soon  
his existence began taking on a wider range of shades, skin and clothes  
becoming more than just dark in imperceptible darker. Faded paints  
sprang into existence like the coming of spring, winter's death of color  
reversing in a resurrection of light.  
  
And then Ranma could see.  
  
His feet were a pale reflection of the sky that almost, but not quite,  
overwhelmed the normally light-brown sun-toned skin that covered them.  
His hands were better off, having been held clutched against his chest,  
trapped between his torso and his tucked-up legs. Clutched against his  
stomach, attempting to succor by osmotic cannibalism. A failure, but  
they'd stayed warm.  
  
Ranma stretched, his feet running away from the pants they'd been  
trapped in as his legs extended beyond their confining reach. The pants  
hadn't been quite big enough and he could feel the buzzing of a thousand  
mosquitoes underneath his skin, burrowing through the flesh and bone  
that terminated at the end of each leg. Then the stinging began, and  
went on and on and on until he had to move, had to make it stop, tucking  
his feet back under him in defense. They touched with an orgasmic burst  
of sparkles, every deadened nerve celebrating at the renewed stimuli.  
He gasped in pain and froze, unwilling to try and stand, to let the  
reviving blood flow faster, forcing himself to wait it out.  
  
A few minutes later it was gone. Ranma moved his feet experimentally.  
They were tender and very sensitive and still cold, but they were  
usable.  
  
He stood, and stretched again, this time his fists thrusting into the  
treacherous air and waving about slightly in a vengeful attack. He  
sighed, dropping them again.  
  
Ranma looked around. The hills rose to the sides and behind him, and he  
could see where he'd walked the previous day. Ahead of him lay the  
Manor at another couple of hours travel, a trek made possible only by  
his returned sight and the revival of his transportation method. It was  
still a rocky voyage that he wanted nothing to do with.  
  
His stomach made a valiant attempt at setting a marching beat which soon  
devolved into a noise quite like that of heated shrink-wrap sucking  
itself down for long transit times. It went on and on and Ranma could  
feel his insides becoming more compact and streamlined starving  
Afghanistan with every rock-hitting step that he took towards the  
Manor's grape fields.  
  
It was a long few hours.  
  
  
The ripped earth that was the grape fields had been meticulously cleaned  
of stones. It was soft and compressed comfortingly beneath his feet,  
the coolness somehow being soothing as it squeezed between his toes.  
The gentle massage made his abused feet feel like they might actually be  
worth something in a few hours.  
  
Reaching what he deemed an invisible point in the grape fields, Ranma  
sat down. Wooden posts wrapped about with green grapevines, splashes of  
tasteful purple hanging heavy, surrounded him. If Artena or Chloe  
hadn't spotted him approaching they wouldn't have any idea that he was  
here, among the grapes, a wolf among sheep.  
  
Only sheep do not die so quickly.  
  
He popped the things into his mouth as quickly as he could, spitting out  
the pits and then replacing the remains with a new grape. Several seeds  
were swallowed but were quickly dismissed after the sweet flesh of the  
next plump fruit washed away the feeling of the previous rough passage.  
He had to move three times in order to keep the grapes within easy reach  
as he decimated everything his greedy mouth-guided hands could snatch  
up.  
  
Ranma collapsed onto his back, bloated belly making him top-heavy enough  
to justify the sudden laziness. The sun was making its presence known  
and he was warm despite the surrounding vegetation and the cool earth  
pillowing his entire body. He glimpsed down and saw that his feet had  
regained normal skin tone, although the scratches and generally beaten  
appearance was still present. They looked like they could use some  
rest, so he gave it to them.  
  
  
Ranma opened his eyes and winced. The sun was past its equinox and was  
in the exact position for over at him from where it was falling to the  
earth. It was late afternoon.  
  
The juices on his face had dried and become a sticky mask, its glue  
painful as it clung to the skin and tried to prevent the movement that  
his yawn entailed. He wiped it off with his hands, using his shirt to  
clear away as much of the stuff as he could.  
  
That done, he sat up. Corpses of grape bunches lay everywhere. Here, a  
severed stem that looked raw and painful where the flesh of the grapes  
had been ripped from its nurturer, there a plundered post that not one  
of the grape bunches attached to remained free of rape and slaughter.  
Seeds were scattered everywhere, the heat of the sun already causing the  
sticky remains to be rotting at a rate that would have required bodies  
to immediately be carted off to the morgue. That a killer had been on  
the loose could never be more apparent.  
  
Ranma's belly had recovered during his nap and was once again ready to  
go to war.  
  
A short time later he was once again sated, though he stopped before the  
bursting point. It was time to get moving again, to find out where the  
village was, and then from there, which direction to Japan. It couldn't  
be as far as Chloe had said. A year's travel? Ha! Ranma doubted it'd  
take even half that long.  
  
He stood and then walked to the edge of the row, to the open area at the  
edge of the field he'd slaughtered, and looked around. Artena wasn't in  
sight. Chloe was right behind him.  
  
Well, not that close, but he could see her about a half-mile off,  
heading from the very same set of hills that he'd nearly frozen himself  
to death on the night before. She was a tiny splash of dark green  
trickling rolling away from the mostly-dead slopes. She probably had  
shoes on.  
  
What had she been doing over there?  
  
Ranma turned around and headed back into the field, following the path  
between rows until they had curved enough that Chloe wouldn't see him  
when she walked by. Then he sat down to wait, munching on a few grapes  
as he did so. Not many, since he was still pretty full. Just as a  
snack.  
  
Chloe had been headed south, and was now returning. Why? She had shoes  
on and could walk faster than he could over all the rocks. Had she had  
enough time to go to the village and then come back while he was  
sleeping? He hadn't seen anything when he'd gone that way...but what  
else could it be?  
  
Ranma scowled at the ground in annoyance. If he was going to go to  
Japan he needed to get moving. So which way was it?  
  
Chloe would know. Maybe he could trick her into telling him.  
  
  
Chloe marched back to the Manor. Ranma hadn't been there, hadn't been  
anywhere that she could see when she headed south just like he had.  
She'd worked her way up the hills, getting ever higher as she got  
further into her pursuit, and when they turned to solid rock jutting  
into the air, she had had a view of miles around. Within that view was  
a distinct lack of Ranma.  
  
So she turned around and headed back.  
  
After finally getting permission to kill Ranma, he managed to escape her  
entirely. The only consolation was that he'd headed in the wrong way  
and would probably starve to death before figuring it out. The boy had  
all the brains of a boiled turnip.  
  
Chloe rubbed a hand through her hair in irritation. Something bounced  
off it again. She stopped and looked down to see a grape seed to the  
left of her feet. A couple of paces behind her was another one.  
  
Again, something bounced off her head.  
  
Ranma was at the edge of a row, smiling cheerily at her. He spat  
something into his hand, then threw another seed.  
  
She responded by reaching beneath her cloak and stripping her harnesses  
as fast as she could manage, emptying their contents in Ranma's  
direction. He dodged each one, running back into the field and out of  
sight. Chloe followed, hands once again filled with metal death and  
itching to make good use of it. 


	3. part 4

She turned down the row. Ranma was a ways ahead of her, running  
straight down the line. The line curved with the arcing growth of fruit  
and she had no way to nail him in the back while running and him being  
shielded by it. She hastened in pursuit.  
  
Ranma didn't slow down and kept a set distance ahead of her, depriving  
Chloe of a chance to attack. She glimpsed the edge of a grin whenever  
he glanced to the side to peek back at her. He was so going to die.  
  
The row ended, opening up into a wider pathway that separated the small  
fields. Ranma turned left. She did the same when she reached it, and  
he was gone. The Manor lay another half mile ahead, grapes extending  
half that distance on each side.  
  
She ran forward, trying to look down the rows both on her left and her  
right. Ranma was gone, probably hiding just a little ways down one of  
the rows, laughing silently at her. She hadn't thought he'd know to do  
it quietly.  
  
Chloe stopped and listened, just to be sure. No sound, so he really was  
keeping his mouth shut. She waited a moment longer and then turned left  
down one of the rows, walking slowly back towards where she'd been  
attacked, listening. Nothing.  
  
She arrived at the end of the row and turned left again. Ranma wasn't  
going to show up so she should head back to the Manor. She still had  
something to do, first. She kept walking, searching the ground to her  
left where the grapes began.  
  
Again, Chloe stopped. She frowned and then looked at her surroundings.  
There was a seed next to her foot. Two more were close by. There were  
marks on the wooden post at the end of one row, and on it a few bunches  
of grapes that had sustained some form of attack. The blood of the  
casualties dripped down.  
  
The marks in the post were where the knives had hit, the slaughtered  
grapes the unfortunate victims of her attack on Ranma. But the  
instruments themselves were gone.  
  
Ranma had stolen her knives. Again.  
  
  
From where Ranma lay watching, Chloe looked really pissed. Her hands  
clenched for a second before she swept her cloak open and tucked the  
knives back into their sheaths. He couldn't tell how many she had left,  
but there were plenty of empty spots in the harnesses he'd been able to  
see. He'd picked up eight of the things. Scary how fast she'd gotten  
them off. He could do it as quickly, of course, but not with any  
accuracy.  
  
But he couldn't do it with accuracy even while throwing one knife in the  
time she'd tossed eight. That definitely needed fixing. If he could  
just figure out what his problem was...  
  
It didn't matter. Soon he'd be back in Japan and he could get his  
father to show him how to do it, show him the training method that'd  
make him much better than Chloe was. Wouldn't be long now, nope.  
  
Chloe turned and started to walk back towards the Manor. She was  
walking quietly, slowly, obviously trying to spy or hear him. Ranma  
stood up and moved out onto the pathway behind her. He opened his mouth  
and she twisted around and ripped two knives through the air, aimed  
right at his face.  
  
Ranma ducked and two more were on the way, spaced a foot apart and  
centered on his chest, one trailing the other slightly. He rotated  
right and quickly sucked in his breath. The knife on the right went  
behind him harmlessly. The other skimmed his chest, the tip trapping  
itself in his clothes and causing the handle of the knife to flip away  
from him, digging the point into his chest before the knife continued  
moving past, flipping end over end now, drops of blood spraying from it.  
  
Ranma yanked his hands out of his pockets and whipped two of his  
borrowed blades in Chloe's direction, then dove forward to evade the  
ones she'd already tossed. They missed, but his did, too, by a wider  
margin, and two more knives were already headed at him.  
  
Ranma rolled forward into a row of grape vines to escape. He continued  
to his feet and then took off running. So he had six of her knives now.  
Damn. She was faster than he'd thought.  
  
He peeked back and she wasn't there, so he kept moving. He crossed out  
of that field and then turned right. He went a short distance down the  
pathway and then turned left into the next field, running to the end of  
that one before turning left again. He turned back into the field  
shortly before it ended, then went almost to the other side, staying far  
enough away from the field divider that he had to peer through grapes to  
see it clearly.  
  
After about ten minutes Chloe passed by, once again holding a knife in  
each hand and her eyes all over the place. Stepping softly, quietly,  
carefully, and listening. Ranma grinned. Ukyou hadn't been near this  
much fun.  
  
He looked down at where his shirt was sticking to his bleeding chest,  
because he'd pushed it up against his wound, holding it there as he  
waited. Ranma didn't have to hold it anymore. The shirt had a red  
stain the size of his hand that was literally soaked through. As  
bandages went, it sucked. But it was better than nothing.  
  
Still, it'd be healed in a day or two. He was just surprised that she'd  
gotten him there. For her to detect him when Chloe was ahead of him,  
and he knew he hadn't made any noise walking barefoot and listening to  
his clothes, was impressive. His father had done a good job teaching  
him to sneak. Who had taught her how to listen?  
  
Ranma waited until she was past. This time he didn't approach her from  
behind, instead deciding to let her go back to the Manor for now. He  
could find out later where Japan was. It was probably too late in the  
day for him to get to the village by dark anyway. Sleeping here rather  
than out on the hills again sure did have its appeal. Plus there were  
grapes.  
  
Ranma slithered out to the end of the row and peeked around the corner.  
Chloe was almost to the Manor now and walking at a normal pace. She'd  
given up on finding him for the day, which was fine with Ranma. They  
could play again tomorrow, only then he wouldn't let himself be  
surprised. They could play every day until she told him how to get to  
Japan. Or until Chloe ran out of knives.  
  
In the meantime he might as well get some practicing in.  
  
  
Chloe stomped into the Manor and headed for her room. Six knives, the  
imbecile had taken. Plus the five he'd already swiped before. She had  
plenty of knives but none of them did she want to give up to some  
grinning little catamite who couldn't have even used them to cut butter,  
sharp though they were.  
  
So Ranma had figured out that south wasn't the way to go. Or maybe he  
just wanted to spare his uncovered feet the pain of the route he saw.  
Either way he'd come back and decided to pick a fight. If it was  
because he didn't know where to go, well, she'd soon send him on to his  
final destination. If not she would anyway.  
  
Her leg had healed well enough. So had her arm. She'd seen the  
surprised look on Ranma's face when she first threw at him, seen that he  
was unprepared for her uninjured speed. And so she'd tagged him, but  
not good enough. Not good enough to slow him down or at least leave a  
bit of a blood trail for her to follow. Too bad.  
  
Maybe next time.  
  
For now it was time to get back to practicing. Her left arm had been a  
bit off and though the speed was mostly there, the accuracy was down a  
bit. When she'd nailed him the two knives were supposed to have been  
slightly closer together. If they had been the knife that hit him  
wouldn't have been just a slash-by. It'd have stuck to his chest long  
enough to be joined by companions.  
  
Chloe refilled her harnesses using the box of knives in her wardrobe.  
She stuck a few in her shorts pockets, too, just in case. If she ran  
into him again, she wanted plenty of ammunition. If not she could spend  
more time throwing and less time retrieving.  
  
Fully stocked, she set out to turn a target board into toothpicks.  
  
  
Ranma continued to lay down at the end of the row of grapes, thinking.  
Where could he practice? Chloe already knew about his going out to the  
coliseum, she might think to check if he was out there again. Was there  
anywhere he could go that wouldn't allow her to sneak up on him? He was  
going to have to do some more exploring of the area. Maybe a spot in  
those ruins behind the coliseum...  
  
His wondering was interrupted when Chloe came stomping back out of the  
Manor. Ranma grinned when he saw what she was up to. Throwing  
practice? Was that a challenge? She was just a little ways away from  
the Manor, tossing at her usual target. It was a little in front of the  
left edge facing the building, and she was throwing from close to the  
center.  
  
Ranma was about a quarter mile away but he could still see that she kept  
looking in the direction of the fields, towards him.  
  
He was going to have to do something about this.  
  
  
Sneaking over to behind the Manor took a lot longer than he thought it  
would. First he had to go west a half-mile or so, to make sure he was  
completely behind Chloe, then he had to cross the quarter-mile between  
the edge of the grape fields to where the Manor was. That part of the  
trip was filled with slow movements and dropping to the ground whenever  
he could see more of Chloe than her hair and back, when she looked to  
the sides or turned around after going to fetch her knives. Then he had  
to travel the extra half-mile to get to the left side of the Manor.  
  
Now, though, he quickly crossed the length of the backside of the Manor.  
He crouched down to put his head at a less obtrusive height and then  
slowly, slowly glimpsed around the corner. Nothing. Just the rightmost  
edge of the building.  
  
He went around the corner and then began to work his way towards the  
front of the building, thinking quiet thoughts, sneaky thoughts filled  
with an intent to deceive, to evade, and to slip by unnoticed and  
unheard. He could hear impacts now, the sound of Chloe's knives  
thunking into her target. And sticking, of course.  
  
But he couldn't see the target. It was in front of the building, just a  
little left of where he snuck. He couldn't see it quite yet.  
  
He moved closer to the next corner. From where Chloe stood the  
difference in distances between him and her target would be negligible.  
Sneaky thoughts, quiet thoughts, unseen thoughts.  
  
His eye floated past the edge of the building and he saw Chloe. She was  
standing where she had been before, about thirty feet in front of the  
Manor. The target was the same distance from the building, almost  
directly in front of him, just five or so feet to his left. The  
distance between Chloe and the target was twenty feet.  
  
Damn.  
  
Ranma settled down to watch. Chloe continued to throw and he studied  
the way she held her body before beginning the throwing motion, the way  
her stance shifted and her weight was balanced as she made the movements  
that gave her throw its force, the way she held her arm and wrist and  
fingers as the knife was given its direction and purpose and left to  
streak through the air and sink into the wood that her violence was  
directed at.  
  
Only she did it with both hands, throwing two at a time, which was  
giving him fits as he tried to watch. And each knife hit in the center  
of the board, right where she was aiming, penetrating side-by-side  
without any difficulties.  
  
Ranma continued to watch. After a couple of minutes Chloe ran out of  
ammunition and then began to approach the target. He retreated to the  
back of the house. When the sound of the knives hitting wood resumed he  
again moved forward to watch, keeping track of how many she threw.  
  
Thirty-two, he counted. The board was a pincushion.  
  
He kept studying her throwing style, trying to memorize what she was  
doing. His accuracy with one knife at a time sucked, but if he started  
practicing with both arms, wouldn't that be twice as efficient? He  
thought so. He could hardly get worse.  
  
After several repetitions of this same sequence, he was ready to make  
his move.  
  
Chloe threw her last knife and he leapt around the corner and threw two  
of his own. She dodged just in time and he was already halfway to the  
target board. By the time she moved forward he was there.  
  
He threw the first knife back at her to cause another dodge, to slow her  
down. It went wide and he cursed, then pulled the rest as quickly as he  
could.  
  
Ranma threw his body to the left, dodging the knife that hit the target  
right where he'd been standing. Chloe had picked up his knives.  
  
He hit the ground at a roll and then used his momentum to get to his  
feet and start running. After a few steps he leapt into the air and  
twisted himself around, flying backwards, and tossed two more knives at  
Chloe. Her knives flew under him and she was out now. She caught one  
knife with her cloak and the other went nowhere close.  
  
She threw the knife to where he was about to land, would have landed if  
not for his aerial techniques, and he dodged and then took off when he  
hit the ground. After a couple of seconds he dodged to the side. A  
knife went by and he glanced back to see two more on the way and Chloe  
getting too distant to continue throwing. She sure did look mad.  
  
Ranma easily evaded the blades and kept heading towards the grape  
fields. He needed to count how many of Chloe's knives he had now.  
  
  
Chloe glared after the pigtailed boy as he ran away. He'd made off with  
almost half of her knives. She was going to kill him, yes she was.  
Soon.  
  
"Chloe."  
  
She turned to see that Artena was standing just outside the Manor  
entrance. How long had she been there? Artena's expression was  
pleasant, she didn't seem upset or disappointed.  
  
"Yes, Artena-sama?"  
  
"It's time for dinner."  
  
"...okay, Artena-sama."  
  
Chloe slipped the remaining knives into their harnesses. The ones she'd  
thrown at Ranma took a few minutes to locate. She wasn't going to leave  
them out here for the boy to come and retrieve while she wasn't looking.  
  
Chloe followed Artena inside.  
  
  
Ranma watched from halfway to the grape fields as Chloe went back  
inside. Artena had called her off. He had been expecting pursuit and  
having the game cut early was a bit of a disappointment. His heart was  
thumping and his feet and hands were wide awake and tingling and ready  
for anything. But Chloe had skipped out.  
  
He sighed and crouched down, pulling out the knives he'd stuck in his  
pockets. Nineteen, and the pockets were completely full. He'd had to  
carry some in his hands because he couldn't get any more to fit inside  
his pockets, as rushed as he was. Running with masses of sharp steel on  
each hip made him nervous, too. He'd have to do something with them  
before too long.  
  
Maybe he could steal a couple of Chloe's harnesses?  
  
Ranma carefully replaced the knives inside his pockets and then started  
walking towards the fields again. He could eat some grapes while  
considering the problem.  
  
  
Chloe ate quietly. For some reason Artena was watching her. Artena  
hadn't said anything, but Chloe wasn't surprised. She had asked what  
was wrong but had gotten no response. She knew what the problem was,  
though.  
  
She was a disappointment, she knew. That girl would have killed Ranma  
in the first meeting. Chloe hadn't been able to do it after a number of  
attempts. If Ranma was an assassin instead of an imbecile he would have  
killed her already. That he hadn't was from no accomplishment on her  
part.  
  
Chloe wanted to be as good as that girl was.  
  
She set her fork down, finished, and looked up at Artena, who placed her  
own utensil on the table.  
  
"You failed again," Artena said. Her voice was pleasant.  
  
She nodded. "Yes, Artena-sama."  
  
"Do you wish me to bring the other girl here? To help you with this  
problem?" Understanding.  
  
Chloe bowed her head. "No, Artena-sama. I will do it." Tears dripped  
from her chin.  
  
"You can have two weeks, then. After that it will no longer be your  
concern." Kindness. A reprieve.  
  
She breathed in through her mouth because her nose was blocked up, its  
tip wet. "Thank you, Artena-sama," she said.  
  
She would kill Ranma. She would kill Ranma so that she could be Noir,  
just like she should be.  
  
  
Ranma spat out another seed, tossed it over to the next row where it'd  
not be in his way. They always felt a bit slimy afterwards, the  
combination of his saliva and the fruit's juices mixing unpleasantly.  
Plus they were hard if the decided to lay down. Better to just keep  
them out of the way.  
  
So, he had two pocketfuls of knives, a belly full of grapes, no shoes,  
and no idea how to get home. Maybe his dad would hunt him down. That'd  
solve his problems quickly enough.  
  
If Chloe and Artena had been telling the truth about where he was,  
though, that seemed unlikely. He'd done enough traveling around Japan  
with his father to know that even his country was a big place. His  
father probably wouldn't even have a clue where to begin looking. First  
he'd check the nearby villages, and if nobody had seen him, then what?  
  
Ranma didn't know how he'd gotten here. He didn't pay enough attention  
in class; France was a country but he knew no more about it and had no  
idea how far it was from Japan. Artena had said it'd take most of a  
year to walk the distance. Had he arrived in a plane? Maybe he could  
hitch a ride on one to get back, as well. He didn't know how easy it'd  
be to find the airport, though, or to figure out which plane went to  
Japan.  
  
Ranma sighed. It was going to get dark before too much longer. He  
needed to figure out where to sleep, if staying in the fields would be a  
good place. Also, some of the knives needed to be ditched, and he still  
had to figure out where he could practice without Chloe finding him and  
making a nuisance of herself. Not that she could ever be otherwise.  
  
Ranma stood and started walking.  
  
  
Chloe stepped outside of the Manor. It was dark out and had been for a  
couple of hours now. It was time for the search to begin.  
  
First she waited until her eyes adjusted to the moonlight present. The  
fields were visible, rows of graduating blackness off in the distance.  
Empty ground spread ahead of her before terminating in the dark, bloody  
maliciousness of the purple grapes. The grapes were a dark horde eating  
at the land.  
  
She crossed to the black. Here it was broken, uneven. Up close the  
moon's light filtered through, exposed the space between each row. The  
places she had to look, had to search, were revealed.  
  
She walked down the first row of this particular field, from one end to  
the next. Then she turned and went back using the next row. Then the  
next, then the next, until she lost count, until she got to the end of  
the last row.  
  
Then she started on the next field.  
  
Chloe was quiet as she could be. Her hands were empty; she had no wish  
to make a mistake simply because she got so accustomed to holding a  
knife that she didn't try to throw it right away if necessary.  
Familiarity brings it's own problems. Inertia is a killer.  
  
She stepped silently through the grapes and her eyes were everywhere as  
she forced herself to look about continuously. It wasn't enough to just  
walk down each row--what if Ranma heard her coming somehow?--she had to  
keep an eye out for her will-be victim to ensure that she caught the  
rabbit.  
  
So she stalked through the fields, row by row, field to field, searching  
for the boy she had to kill.  
  
  
Ranma woke suddenly to find himself staring up at blackness. He  
listened, still, trying to figure out what scared off the sandman. His  
surroundings breathed quietly, the wind rasping as it scraped over the  
stones above and all around him. But nothing else sounded.  
  
He sat up and looked about. The sand below was empty of spectators, a  
white glare at the sky, the focus of the coliseum harshly blank and  
lonely. The moon was low on its arc over his nighttime, but there were  
still several hours until the sun began its own trek.  
  
His head smacked softly against the stone beneath and he winced. After  
putting his hands to the back of his skull as an inadequate pillow, he  
closed his eyes and went back to sleep.  
  
  
It was morning and the moon's cheerful wake had commenced. The sun was  
now alive, the newborn weak and small, soon to grow in position and  
power. The fall was forever away, but it would come.  
  
Ranma yawned and stretched. After a couple of minutes he could feel his  
hands again, so he used them to prop himself up to his knees. He stood,  
then climbed up the few remaining steps. A leap gained the top,  
outermost ring of the coliseum walls.  
  
The drop was two feet away, death waiting at a distance below. The edge  
of the stone was smooth from years of triumphant wrinkles that ruled  
dominant and then faded into each other over the course of centuries.  
The theatre screen that was the rest of the world stretched forever in  
all directions, starting at the ledge before him.  
  
One small smudge on that screen was a fluff of bright, purplish red,  
under which a creature in green carried it about.  
  
Ranma stared. Chloe was already out looking for him? Talk about  
dedication!  
  
  
"Chloe! Hiiiii!"  
  
She stopped, looked around. Blinking made the universe smear slightly.  
She'd stay awake, though. She would.  
  
Ranma was a couple hundred feet away, waving at her from outside the  
grape fields, in the clearing east of her that extended towards the  
coliseum. He had a big smile on his face. He opened his mouth.  
  
"Which way to Japan?" he shouted. Casual tourist asking for directions.  
  
Chloe pointed south.  
  
When Ranma turned to look she was already on the way, running as fast as  
she could. She exited the row she was in and quickly covered the empty  
ground between them. But not quickly enough.  
  
He turned towards her when she was halfway there and she saw his  
surprise. Ranma's grin returned quickly, though, and he, too, pointed  
south.  
  
When she looked back at him, the pigtail was bouncing around on his back  
as he ran ahead of her to the coliseum. He was only slightly faster  
than her and the distance remained mostly even, though by the time they  
arrived he had gained a little. The arc of the stone entranced pass  
overhead.  
  
The sand inside was cluttered with junk, as usual. Ranma's practice  
post still stood near the center of the arena, though it listed heavily  
to one side. The boy must have tried using it as a stationary target  
for something other than the knives he'd stolen from her.  
  
Chloe watched the stands carefully as she moved towards the post,  
turning in all directions as she went. There was no sign of Ranma, but  
with the angle and height of the seating she couldn't see the spaces  
behind the upper benches. That had to be where he was.  
  
Still keeping an eye out, she moved to the nearest staircase and began  
to ascend. She was quiet, and listened for sound other than that of her  
shoes scuffing noisily with each step on the stone. Her breath was slow  
and relaxed like moving gently through hot water. She was ready for  
this, ready to get it over with.  
  
Each step came with the expectation that she would hear him break for  
cover, his hiding spot discovered. Each step was an exercise in  
alertness, her eyes and ears remapping the coliseum a thousand times.  
Each step came unaccompanied by anything but the next.  
  
Chloe arrived at the top step and looked around again. Nothing. She  
could see every part of the coliseum, now, except for the tunnels  
leading into it. Ranma hadn't had enough time to get to one of those  
before she arrived, so where was he?  
  
Behind her was the last ring of stone that made up the outer wall of the  
gladiator pit. It was eight feet taller than the highest step, the  
highest benches. Ranma could be hiding up there.  
  
She jumped and caught the ledge with her hands, pulled herself up after  
seeing that Ranma wasn't immediately before her. Once stable on the  
stone shelf, she looked around. It was bare the entire length of the  
wall, and she still couldn't see Ranma within the coliseum.  
  
"Chloe! Hiiii!" His voice was faint, but she could tell where it came  
from. Outside the coliseum.  
  
Chloe twisted about and looked over the edge. Ranma was several hundred  
feet away from the building and she briefly considered throwing herself  
off of it to at least have a chance to catch up. But even that wouldn't  
be enough.  
  
"Which way to Japan?" Ranma shouted again. Then, when she didn't  
respond, "I'm going to go get breakfast! Seeya later!"  
  
She said nothing, and after a minute he turned and started walking back  
to the Manor, and to the grape fields, where he would eat the breakfast  
she had skipped in order to hunt for him.  
  
She watched from above, defeated once again.  
  
  
Ranma popped another grape into his mouth as he observed Chloe passing  
by. She was going slower than he'd seen her walking before, no doubt  
embarrassed at having been tricked so easily. She'd get over it quickly  
enough, as soon as she next saw him, he was sure, and be attacking him  
again in no time. She seemed excitable like that.  
  
She headed for the Manor, so he waited until she was inside, and then  
started walking in the opposite direction, back towards the coliseum and  
the ruins that lay beyond. He wanted to see what was over there.  
  
Twenty minutes later and he was inside some ancient stone city.  
Corridors of giant bricks formed roads twenty feet wide for him to walk  
down, the buildings and walls on each side thirty feet tall. Doorways  
were cut intermittently, and when he looked inside one it contained an  
empty, echo-laden room that responded eagerly to his yells. He played  
with that for a few minutes before moving on.  
  
It didn't take long to figure out that there wasn't much of interest  
here. Lots of old stones making up empty old rooms. Maybe if Chloe had  
been chasing him around with those knives of hers it would have been  
more fun, but as it was he felt like he was taking a slow, in-depth tour  
of a boring museum, like his father had forced him to go on before. The  
tours were a good scouting method for his father to use before sneaking  
back in and stealing stuff later. Since his father had never taken him  
along on those "Saotome School of Acquisition Liberation" expeditions,  
Ranma would usually fall asleep on a bench while everybody else walked  
around going "ooh" and "ah" while gawking at old stuff.  
  
That's what this city felt like; old and dead and having nothing to fun  
play with.  
  
After exploring for a little while he came across a big indention in the  
ground, a circle inset so that a number of rows of steps lead down to  
the center, which was about a hundred feet across. Pillars forty feet  
high were spaced evenly throughout the circle. Ringing the outside  
edges were benches that were built into the slope. Ranma guessed that  
the circle was some kind of theatre.  
  
The rest of the city, which really wasn't all that big, was just more of  
what he'd first seen when he'd arrived: boring stone buildings in  
various stages of falling down. Most of it didn't seem to be falling  
down very well, though.  
  
When Ranma was just about at the end of his exploring limit he found the  
hot springs. They were really, really hot, but he still had fun  
swimming around for a little while. While doing so he kept an eye out  
for Chloe to show up, but she never did. She could have nailed him  
pretty good if he was in the middle of the spring and no quick escape.  
  
The springs would probably be a good place to sleep, he figured, since  
the heat rising off of the water and surrounding stones kept the area  
nice and warm. The theatre would have been useful for practicing if the  
whole place wasn't made out of stone with no way to set up a grape post  
to use as a target. He'd find something else. Maybe he could still use  
the coliseum, as long as he was careful.  
  
Those knives were really sharp, after all.  
  
Deciding that was what he would do, Ranma headed back to the coliseum. 


	4. part 5

Ranma pulled the post up out of the ground and pushed some of the  
surrounding sand over the knives he'd hidden underneath. Then he dug  
another hole a foot away from its predecessor and shoved the end of the  
post into it before packing sand up against the sides to hold the wood  
upright. The sand was dry and didn't pack well, instead just seeming to  
settle easily to wherever he pushed it, so he just piled the stuff onto  
the base as best as he could. After giving it a few experimental  
shoves, he deemed his target stable enough to use.  
  
He backed up to about twenty feet away, and threw his ten remaining  
knives with his left hand. Then he retrieved them and returned to his  
standing point. Ranma tried throwing with his right hand this time. He  
hadn't magically improved since his last practice session.  
  
Throwing two knives at once was next, so he fetched the knives again and  
got ready to toss them. He stood at the previous spot, then closed his  
eyes and visualized Chloe while she was practicing. He emulated the  
vision, holding his body as close to her stance as he could. Then he  
watched Chloe's movements in slow motion and followed them, his eyes  
still closed, the only difference being that he didn't release when he  
got to the end of the motion.  
  
It felt right. He was going to do it perfectly this time.  
  
Ranma opened his eyes, staring at the target now, and, with his blue  
orbs staring, re-pictured Chloe's starting posture. Then he copied her  
movements while fixating on the target, which was directly ahead of him.  
The knives flew freely, he wasn't sure when they left his hands, and  
sailed through the air towards the target. The left knife passed over  
the top of it by about half a foot, the right-handed knife cutting  
across to the left and then hitting the ground five feet to the opposite  
side of the pole.  
  
Ranma frowned, then closed his eyes and tried again. He superimposed  
Chloe's image over his own kinesthetic sense of placement. He started  
the movements, opening his eyes partway through to glare at the enemy.  
His arms unerringly followed the paths set by those of another.  
Release, and both missed. Again.  
  
So did the next six, and the ten after that, and the ten after that,  
and...  
  
He was hungry, and it'd been hours since he'd last eaten of grapes.  
  
Ranma collected the knives again, replacing them carefully into his  
pants pockets. Five knives to a pocket were the most he could  
comfortably fit, and even then, the hilts stuck out a few inches for  
each one. At least that made them easy to pull out, if Chloe showed up  
and he needed to use one of them as a distraction. She could be  
somewhat startling, Chloe could, and requiring of diversion.  
  
The trek back to the fields was uneventful. He looked around to see if  
the girl was anywhere about, but failed to spot her hiding in the grass  
or anything. Since it was a little after noon he figured she was  
probably in eating lunch. She might not eat as much as he did, but she  
did clean her plate (sometimes with his help) every time he saw her sit  
down to a meal.  
  
Ranma sat down in one of the fields he hadn't filched from before. He  
didn't want to develop a habit of eating at the same place, and strip  
the area or something equally drastic. Not that he'd be here for that  
long.  
  
The grapes tasted as they usually did, like little balloons bursting of  
sweet water, foiled only by the hard seeds contained within. The fleshy  
remains scattered as wind-swept corpse ashes, tossed about in random  
directions as one hand snatched at the next morsel and the other  
disposed of the previous.  
  
Good as they were, his belly still felt like it sloshed of liquid after  
binging on the things. A change of provisions would be nice. Something  
heavier and more substantial, like rice or noodles, maybe some fish or  
even a beef bowl. Cup ramen would be wonderful.  
  
Ranma wondered if they had any of that in France, and where in France it  
would be, since it wasn't here.  
  
He glimpsed over at the Manor again, and this time a lack of  
motionlessness was present. Chloe was exiting the building.  
  
She stopped after marching a few paces, then started to look around.  
Her face revolved slowly as she searched for him. Partway through the  
task her jaw detached itself in a wide yawn. Ranma grinned, wishing he  
was close enough to toss in a grape.  
  
After glaring about, probably wondering if he saw that, Chloe set off  
towards the coliseum, or the ruins beyond. He waited as she walked by,  
giving her a good five-minute lead, and then stood himself, playing the  
wine keg. Bread would be nice, too.  
  
Ranma followed at a discreet distance and made like an ostrich whenever  
she seemed about to look backwards. It hurt, sometimes. His clothes  
got dirtier, the dried red blood of his previously white shirt becoming  
overlaid with a caking of brown. His feet were holding together well,  
though. Cold sharp rocks seemed to be their weakness.  
  
She went into the coliseum so he ran along the outside of the building  
until he came to one of the other entrances. He didn't want to be  
caught the same way he'd done her, jumping down from over the  
passageway. Chloe wouldn't use the opportunity as a chance to escape.  
  
When he reached the inner end of the tunnel he sidled up to one of the  
corners, watching in the opposite direction for Chloe to come into view.  
When she didn't, he peeked around the stones at his back, to check the  
other side of the arena. He saw her enter the tunnel that was opposite  
the direction of the Manor. The one that led directly into the middle  
of the ruins.  
  
He waited a minute and then dashed out into the open, quickly reaching  
the passageway Chloe had walked. He again peeked around the corner and  
saw that she was near the opening on the other side. When she got  
there, she kept going straight, following the road that lead in that  
direction rather than turning to one side. The passageway was dark  
enough, shadowed enough, that he decided to risk following her down it.  
He could flatten himself down again if she turned around for some reason  
and probably not be seen.  
  
Once he reached the end he quickly turned right down one of the side  
roads, hiding behind a wall whose face was perpendicular to the road  
Chloe was on. If she looked back and he wasn't hiding behind something  
she would see him, with the flat stones making up the street surface and  
the sun being overhead to reveal any sneakiness. Laying on the ground  
in that situation would only give her a head start on tagging him.  
  
Chloe continued going straight and the road remained unbending. There  
was no way for him to follow her without making himself painfully  
visible, so Ranma hurried down the side street he was hiding in, turned  
left, and then traveled a few blocks in Chloe's direction. Then he  
turned left, sneaking up to the corner and peeking right around it.  
Chloe was another couple of blocks ahead, just as he had anticipated,  
still walking forward.  
  
Where was she going? The direction she was headed in would just take  
her through the ruined city, with the more broken-down buildings being  
ahead of her. The hot springs were in another direction, she would have  
had to turn right like he had in order to get to those.  
  
Ranma followed, checking her progress every few blocks while he ran  
along the road parallel to Chloe heading.  
  
Soon the stone buildings began to show increasing signs of disorder.  
Stones were strewn about the roadway, obviously parts of damaged houses  
or whatever the stone structures that lined the streets had been. Some  
walls were caved inwards, some ceilings collapsed. The destruction  
hadn't been caused by the passing ages--if they had, all of the  
buildings would have been similarly effected. Had there been some kind  
of fight here? When was it, when the city was abandoned, or did it  
occur afterwards?  
  
There wasn't anything that indicated explosions had done the damage.  
The rocks didn't have holes and craters blasted into them, so he didn't  
think that whatever had caused the devastation hadn't been some kind of  
modern weaponry. Not unless a tank had just come rolling in and knocked  
everything over, anyway.  
  
Catching himself spending more time looking at his surroundings than  
looking after Chloe, Ranma rushed down the sidestreet once more. He  
again looked around the corner, this one barely his own height due to  
the missing blocks of stone. Chloe wasn't there.  
  
He looked back in the opposite direction, to see if she had turned  
around, but saw nothing. She must have turned down one of the streets  
when he wasn't paying attention. But where had she gone? There hadn't  
been anything interesting in the area when he'd come by earlier.  
Nothing worth walking all the way from the Manor for, certainly.  
  
Ranma stepped out into the street and turned right, following the  
direction Chloe had been going. He walked quickly, looking down the  
smaller streets on each side as he traveled, checking for her presence.  
He saw nothing. The buildings were damaged heavily here, only some of  
them even having intact walls facing the street. He stepped carefully  
to avoid the stone fragments that littered the street.  
  
After a few blocks he stopped. Maybe she had turned and gone back the  
other way, or taken a turn before he'd switched to this road? If she  
had continued this far he would have been able see her still. Or...  
His eyes widened.  
  
Ranma jumped to the side and two knives hit the stone street a moment  
later, passing through the spot he'd been standing. Chloe was above,  
had climbed up one of the ruined buildings and waited for him from the  
rooftop. Right as he moved, she threw again and he had no doubt that  
she was going as quickly as she was able, because they came two at a  
time, one pair after the other as he leapt about and dodged as best and  
as erratically as he could.  
  
After a minute of this his foot came down hard on a rough piece of rock.  
He yelled out in pain and pushed himself off with his other leg, rolling  
towards Chloe, getting a few more rocks in the back for the cost of his  
escape as two more knives barely missed him. There was no way to make a  
drastic change of directions in mid-somersault using only one leg. He  
used his momentum to roll to his feet, ignoring the still-stabbing pain  
in his foot and now back, and tossed the knives he'd snatched from his  
pockets during that last move.  
  
They weren't great throws but they caused Chloe to pause for a second.  
He used the opportunity to move forward again, more easily now, to use  
the wall of the building Chloe stood upon as shelter. He grabbed a few  
rocks, bending down as he ran and snatching them up. Rocks he was good  
with.  
  
Now close to the building, he ran alongside it, heading for the nearest  
way up to the top. Ranma heard a slight scuffle behind him, on the  
opposite side of the street. He stopped and whirled, tossing a rock at  
where the noise had come from. One of Chloe's knives hit the wall  
behind his ear, bouncing off in the right direction to miss getting him  
on the ricochet. The girl ducked to avoid getting hit in the face with  
his rock. They both threw again.  
  
They both dodged, and he could see the frustration on her face. She had  
to be getting low on knives. He had two pockets full of the things. He  
threw another rock, keeping an eye on Chloe's arms as she did the same,  
using his judgment of the throw vector to anticipate where the knives  
would be, and dodge them. This time he dodged towards Chloe. She was  
fifteen feet away.  
  
She looked angry at the advance but moved to meet him. A blade was in  
each hand and she was in a knife-fighter's stance, something he'd only  
seen once before when his father had gotten into a drunken brawl with  
someone who was fond of making stabbing gestures. She held the side of  
her body towards him, left arm leading with knife extended and the right  
hovering in front of her torso, waiting for a chance to twist her body  
towards him and plunge the knife into his stomach or neck or something  
else that was soft necessary for Ranma's well-being. Ranma made the  
mental adjustments to compensate for Chloe's extra range.  
  
He tossed one of his rocks at her head and she ducked while sidling  
forwards, now only a few feet away. The last rock followed on a heading  
for her gut. Chloe used the flat of her left knife to knock it away,  
stepping forward with her right foot and turning her body so that the  
right side was the vanguard, gaining more ground as she did so.  
  
She turned that movement into a forward lunge, knife leading in a full-  
body motion with her weight emphasized on the attacking arm and  
shoulder. Ranma used his left hand to deflected her arm, knocking it to  
the inside of her body line and preventing a strike with her other  
knife. While she was off-center he stepped in with the right leg and  
punched her in the stomach. She tensed before the blow landed to help  
absorb the damage, but he could tell that her breath was still knocked  
out by the hit.  
  
She stepped back and twisted left, continuing the momentum of the push  
he'd given her, bringing her left arm and knife around in an arc to make  
a backhanded swipe at him. Ranma used his right hand to grab her arm  
just above the elbow and his left caught her wrist, stopping the leading  
knife and leaving her out of line for attacking with her right.  
  
He pulled down and back on her wrist, keeping the elbow steady, his  
leverage making her body try to flip forward. Chloe went with the  
force, bending down. Ranma hopped back slightly when she tried to plant  
her other knife into one of his feet, then gave her arm a more vicious  
twist. She cried out and he used his right leg to kick her hand away.  
The knife flew free from her hand and skidded down the stones of the  
street.  
  
Chloe's right arm being knocked wide put more pressure on her left and  
he could feel more of her weight pulling on her trapped arm. She yelled  
out in pain again. Ranma pushed down on her elbow, bringing the wrist  
and forearm further up and extending Chloe's whimpers. He stepped to  
the inside of her arm, his foot wrapping about her ankle, and released  
the elbow. His body keeping the elbow pinned in place, he used his free  
hand to wrench Chloe's knife away. Then he used the girl's twisted arm  
to push her away. His ankle caused her to go to the ground and he  
stepped back cautiously. The knife slipped into one of his pockets.  
  
Ranma grinned. He knew what was next. Now that he'd beat Chloe she'd  
have to feed him, just like with Ukyou. It would truly be a wonderful  
thing to have a wider range of food substances. Essence of no-grape.  
  
Except that Chloe didn't get up.  
  
Chloe lied on her side, collapsed to the ground with her left arm tucked  
protectively inside her cloak. Red-purple hair covered the upper half  
of her face and Ranma couldn't see her expression at all. She was  
shaking slightly.  
  
Ranma's mouth did a one-eighty. Was she crying? She was, wasn't she?  
Man, there was a reason he didn't like playing with girls; they played  
along with the fun games until they lost and then they got all weepy, or  
they clung to you with demands to play house or doctor or some silly  
crap like that. With Chloe being such a tomboy he'd thought she would  
be as fun as Ukyou had been, but if she was gonna get like this over a  
twisted arm...  
  
"Hey, quit that!" he demanded.  
  
Chloe's only response was to pull her cloak tighter around herself,  
defensively. She turned her face away from him, pointing it towards the  
stone beneath. The rock fragments were probably digging into her cheek,  
but she didn't show it. Or if she did, Ranma couldn't tell.  
  
"Quit it!" he said again. He hated it when girls pulled this.  
  
Ranma picked up a few small rocks and bounced them off of Chloe's hair.  
One of her hands snatched the edge of the cloak and yanked it up as  
protection, wrapping it over her head. The red-purple fluff disappeared  
under a dark, solid green. The bottom of the cloak pulled up some to  
expose her feet and lower legs.  
  
Grinning again, he leaned forward to poke her behind the knee, then  
yanked himself backwards just in time to avoid Chloe's swiping at him  
with another knife as her left arm came slicing out from behind the  
cloak. When she missed Chloe pushed herself off the ground with her  
right arm, springing forward to try to stab at him again with the left.  
  
Ranma twisted frantically and knocked her arm to his right, giving Chloe  
who was smiling fiercely the opportunity to turn with the force and  
bring in her other hand, which also had a knife now. She was still  
moving forward and that gave her enough speed that he couldn't block or  
deflect the blow in time. He twisted and the knife thrust most of its  
length into his left arm.  
  
"Ow! That HURT!" he yelled at her. Chloe tried to pull the knife back  
so he let her, then grabbed her wrist with his left hand before she  
could stab him again. His arm was weak and he could feel blood running  
down it, but he yanked on her wrist, bringing her right up against him  
before she could try anything with the other arm. He smashed his  
forehead into her face and she was knocked backwards, off-balance from  
trying to knee him in the groin.  
  
His arm pleaded with him to release her wrist but Ranma ignored the  
whiny bastard and kept at it. Chloe still hadn't recovered when he  
punched her in the stomach. This time she wasn't ready for it and she  
was pushed back, folding forwards slightly. Her face was white and she  
struggled to breathe, but she still tried to bring the other knife  
around to cut at him.  
  
Ranma twisted and moved forward underneath her extended arm, yanking it  
up behind her back. He could feel her chest heaving as she struggled  
against him, still unable to pull in air. She stomped on one of his  
feet, her heal crushing him into the stone beneath. Ranma yelled in  
pain and shoved her away. The edge of her knife sliced his hand as she  
pulled it to in front of her. He took a few steps back and she turned  
around and did the same, glaring at him triumphantly.  
  
Ranma looked at his hand. A long cut ran the length of his palm. It  
wasn't too deep but blood was running freely from the wound, mixing with  
what had already coated his arm from when she'd stabbed him just before.  
Chloe's knives were very sharp and it hadn't hurt much at first, but  
where his arm had been punctured he could now feel the buzzing of a  
million invisible bees as they began to dig into his flesh, working  
their way into him, an invasion of spreading stings and chewing insects.  
  
He let his arm drop and the blood fell to the floor a tiny bit at a  
time, the trickle slow but steady, that of the leaking milk caused by a  
full baby who still sucks habitually at teat. Red paint dripped  
similarly from one of Chloe's knives, gripped caressingly, reverently in  
a tiny fist. The other knife was handled with disdain, scorn, and it  
screamed in jealousy and a desire to prove itself. Chloe seemed willing  
to give it another chance.  
  
He curled his fist. "You cheated," Ranma accused. She had.  
"Pretending to cry like that, jeez, that was low."  
  
She smirked in response. "Anything-Goes. There are no rules, right?"  
  
"...Yeah. Just remember that." His smile made his head feel tight.  
The bees were spreading. He had a special attack he could use now. An  
appropriate one. One Chloe deserved.  
  
Ranma jumped forward to attack, his right hand coming up sharply,  
releasing the knife he'd pulled out of a pocket. It was aimed correctly  
and Chloe was forced to dodge, losing her stance in the hasty step to  
the side. She stepped right into his other attack. His left hand flung  
forward, snapping open as it jerked to a halt at the end of his reach,  
and collected blood spat itself at Chloe. She barely had time to  
flinch, to stop it from getting into her eyes, but it still splashed all  
over her face and forehead, running down, thick red opaqueness hampering  
her vision with a salty sting of not-quite-sweat.  
  
Her hesitation cost and Ranma kept moving forward. Extended knife arm  
was knocked aside and his foot slammed into the side of her left knee.  
She cried out, went down. As she fell away her right arm crossed her  
body, Chloe bringing the knife around to throw at his chest. He arched  
his back and it flew past, then he bent forward again to punch Chloe in  
the jaw, her face smacking against the stone beneath and stunning her.  
  
Ranma grabbed the edge of Chloe's cloak and ripped it away from her. He  
stumbled back when the cloth pulled out from where it was pinned under  
her body. A red handprint branded the green. He clenched his fist  
around the fabric to help slow the bleeding. Plus it'd stain better.  
  
Chloe got up awkwardly, having trouble standing. The empty hand went to  
her cheek and she was glaring at him again. Ranma could see her  
harnesses, one on each limb, and it looked like five fit to each arm and  
eight to a leg. They were empty, but Chloe still had one more knife.  
Plus there were others from when she'd been throwing at him that were  
scattered all over the road surface, easy to pick up. Underneath she  
had clothes identical to what he was wearing; a long-sleeve white  
button-up shirt and a pair of brown cotton pants. She also wore tennis  
shoes, dirty white and with big laces.  
  
She looked very angry to be without her cloak.  
  
"Give it back!" The blood on her face turned her enraged, upset look  
into something ridiculous.  
  
"Umm... no." Ranma grinned, then wiped the wrap against his bloody arm,  
turning it into a soiled, oversized rag. Chloe's fist tightened around  
her last blade and he wondered if she'd try throwing it. He could block  
or deflect with the cloak. "You have another one of these, don't you?  
I like this one."  
  
The girl wiped her arm across her face, her eyes. The blood streaked  
over her skin but didn't go anywhere. But she didn't attack, she just  
watched him angrily.  
  
Ranma frowned, made a guess. "Catch," he said, and tossed the cloak.  
The blood made it stick and fall short. Chloe stumbled when she stepped  
forward to catch, the knee he'd stomped buckling under her weight. She  
gave him another glare and then held open the cloak to see the  
bloodstains that covered it.  
  
"I hate you," she said quietly.  
  
He stared at Chloe, then picked up a rock and tossed it at her. She  
moved the cloth aside and the stone bounced off her injured knee. Chloe  
made a small noise but continued to stare at the bloody handprints.  
  
"...whatever. Seeya later," he said, then turned and ran down the  
street before she could reply or throw her knife at him.  
  
  
Blood didn't wash off. This was something she knew well. Because of  
that, she was always careful to not get blood on her clothes or on  
herself. The cloak wasn't hers. Chloe didn't know whose it was, but  
she'd found it some years earlier. It had seemed like a nice blanket,  
the dark fabric warm and soft.  
  
Artena had been surprised at her discovery. Her smile had seemed sad,  
then, and Chloe was sure she was going to be told to put the cloak back  
where she'd found it. Instead, Artena told her what it was for, and  
that she could use it if she was very careful. The older woman hadn't  
said who had used it previously, and Chloe hadn't asked. But she  
wondered.  
  
And blood didn't wash off easy. From her first few assassinations she  
knew that to be the case. Standing to close to the victim, the knife or  
sometimes bullet hitting in the right (or wrong) spot, a brief spray,  
and the clothes had to be scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed. They  
wouldn't come clean. Artena just threw the clothes out once they got  
blood on them.  
  
Chloe tucked the cloak under her arm and then slowly limped around the  
street, picking up and harnessing her knives. It took only a few  
minutes, then she hobbled to the nearest side street and turned towards  
the hot springs. Maybe if the blood didn't have enough time to dry, she  
could clean it off. The water was hot and she could scrub it out.  
Maybe.  
  
Her knee was badly sprained and each step drilled a thick steel pin  
home. The pant leg surrounding it seemed tight, tighter than it should  
be, and she was sure that her pants weren't getting smaller. The other  
knee still had plenty of room. She stepped carefully but sometimes her  
haste turned the pin into heavy pick chopping away at pain barriers.  
  
Her cheek throbbed, too, but that was a lesser pain, more easily  
ignored. It didn't fluctuate, it was just a steady hum along her  
nerves. Except when she clenched her teeth those times when her knee  
got hit by a sledgehammer. Then it did hurt, but not as much.  
  
It took her a half hour to reach the hot springs. The blood felt dry.  
The color was darkened and drying out to an almost-brown. Her own  
clothes she would have deemed trash. Not this, though.  
  
There were several small springs, the water bubbling up in different  
areas. Only the biggest one, the one with the lowest temperature, had  
steps leading down into it. One of the others was almost hot enough to  
boil. The earth surrounding it was of a similar temperature. Chloe  
could feel the heat seeping through her shoes and knew she wouldn't be  
able to stay here long.  
  
Crouching was hell. Each thump of the fuel lines contracting was a  
crushing blow designed to torment. She almost wished for her leg to  
fall off so that her knee would stop hurting. But if it did she  
wouldn't be able to keep her balance when doing this, so she suffered  
willingly. She would clean the cloak.  
  
She carefully dipped the garment into the water. When she pulled it  
back out it steamed. Red dripped down from where it was heaviest,  
spreading in a diluted red dye throughout the rest of the material. She  
laid the cloak out on top of the ground and tried scrubbing at the blood  
with a flat rock. It'd work the clotted, thick mess free yet wasn't  
rough-edged enough to cause tears or permanent stretching. She hoped.  
  
She started where the blood was like a printed plastic design on a  
shirt; heavy and stiffening, making the cloth feel cheap and  
uncomfortable. The crust softened slightly, turned more reddish and  
runny, the absorbed water a thin spongy sheet that collected the dry  
excess as it was rubbed free.  
  
Chloe moved on to each bit of the stain, burning her hands on the cloak  
and ground whenever they slipped from the rock, ignoring her sawed-off  
knee's protests as she rocked back and forth, pushing the rock as best  
she could. Soon the scrubbed areas were so littered with bits of  
congealed blood that she couldn't tell what was still stuck to the  
cloak. So she picked it up and leaned forward painfully to dip the  
reddish-green thing into the water again, holding one edge carefully as  
she shook the cloak back and forth. Dirty crimson specks swam free like  
ship-jumpers escaping the sinking Titanic.  
  
When she pulled the cloak free the remaining stains looked almost like  
they'd been there forever. The affected areas just had a little blood  
dried into them, nothing she could pull off with her fingernails or  
separate from the actual cloth. But the discoloring was easy to see.  
  
  
A few hours later she started back for the Manor. The cloak was heavy  
and dripped, the water she hadn't been able to wring out escaping  
slowly. It was hot, too, where she carried it draped over one shoulder,  
and the moisture seeped into her shirt where they touched.  
  
The blood hadn't come out, and now appeared baked into the threads.  
  
Her walk was slow. The injured knee was worse and she could barely take  
a step without wanting to cry. If she thought she could make it far  
enough she would try hopping on the other leg, but even holding her  
damaged one up was very painful. Chloe wished she could just lie down  
and wait for Artena to come and carry her back to the Manor, but why  
would Artena bother?  
  
So she took one excruciating step after another, trying not to think  
about what Artena's reaction to the ruining of the cloak Chloe had been  
lent would be.  
  
It took her almost two hours to walk back to the Manor. Usually it was  
a quick but relaxed forty minutes. Today it was the march from hell.  
  
The sun was low and it was about time for dinner when Chloe arrived.  
She didn't know if she'd be able to eat anything. Her stomach felt  
empty, butterflies need room for high-speed maneuvers, but she didn't  
think holding it down would be easy. She kept picturing Artena's  
disappointment at her failure to be Noir, and her failure to keep the  
cloak, whoever it belonged to, from getting damaged. The tears and thin  
runs of snot that dripped off her chin weren't all because of an injured  
knee.  
  
She hobbled through the doorway. The smell of food scampered about like  
an energetic puppy, making Chloe feel nauseous. She slowed beyond what  
he pain limits required, not sure if she really wanted to go to the  
kitchen. She knew she had to, though. She couldn't hide from Artena.  
She'd tried it before and it always made the woman sad. Chloe didn't  
want that.  
  
So she stepped slowly, timorously, through the threshold and into the  
kitchen.  
  
Artena was at the stove, stirring something that smelled like it would  
make her taste buds explode in an orgasmic frenzy. Chloe's stomach did  
flips and somersaults and all kinds of acrobatics that involved not  
staying still. She stood motionless, waiting. Chloe was sure that  
Artena knew she was there, knew when she had entered the Manor and  
probably knew when she'd even gotten close to it. Artena was much  
better than she was. So was that girl.  
  
After a couple of minutes, Artena turned to look at her. Chloe stood  
still, dirty clothes hanging limply, her skin contaminated by dust and  
scrapes. She could feel the deep bruise on her cheek, and the  
incriminating evidence hung heavily on her shoulder. Her knee trembled.  
  
Artena's eyes studied her up and down, measuring, taking everything in.  
No surprise was evident, the woman just stood there, taller and prettier  
and better than Chloe would ever be, looking at her as though she had  
expected Chloe to show up with such a bedraggled appearance. Except for  
when she saw the cloak. When Artena saw the cloak her eyes widened  
slightly and Chloe died. That hadn't been expected. Artena had thought  
she would do better than that.  
  
"Dinner will be ready in a few minutes," Artena said, turning back to  
her preparations. "Why don't you go get changed?"  
  
"Yes, Artena-sama," Chloe said quietly. She turned and limped off to  
her room.  
  
Easing her leg out of the pants was difficult. The knee had swelled  
badly, it hadn't been her imagination that made the pants tight. Chloe  
didn't want to ruin another garment, though, so she pulled the knee out  
sharply. She wiped her face on the sleeve of her shirt, especially her  
eyes, which were dirty, and changed out of that, as well, carefully  
putting on new, clean clothes. Artena would do the laundry later,  
hopefully getting out any of the simple stains that might be in the  
stuff she was wearing. Chloe carried the dirties, along with the cloak,  
to the room the laundry stuff was in.  
  
After she put her clothes in the basket she hesitated, then went to the  
kitchen, still with the cloak. Artena had already seen it, but...  
  
The table was already set when she got to the dining room, and the food  
was placed. Artena stood up when Chloe entered. She took the cloak  
without a word, then held Chloe's chair for her and helped her scoot it  
in after she'd sat. Then Artena went to her own place again and did the  
same. She put the cloak on her lap.  
  
When Artena started to eat, Chloe did the same. The silence that was  
normally comfortable wasn't. Every time Chloe started to look up at  
Artena she caught herself and tried to concentrate on her food. She  
didn't want to see. Eventually her eyes met Artena's and she looked  
away, ashamed.  
  
"Artena-same, I-"  
  
"Why don't you tell me what happened?" the woman interrupted, and Chloe  
nodded miserably.  
  
She told Artena of how she'd gone to the ruins to look for Ranma and  
noticed him following her, then how she'd waited and attacked from  
ambush and still failed. She told Artena of how she'd been beaten, how  
she'd tricked Ranma and then stabbed and cut him. She told Artena of  
how Ranma had just left when she'd been defeated for real. And she told  
Artena of how she'd tried to clean the cloak, but that the blood  
wouldn't come off.  
  
At that, Artena stopped eating and looked down at her lap. "You tried  
cleaning this in the hot springs?"  
  
"Yes, Artena-sama," she answered.  
  
"Stains only come out when washed in cold water," Artena said quietly.  
  
Chloe didn't look up. Her plate was wet, but it wasn't from something  
she'd been served. She didn't want to look up.  
  
"I'm sorry, Artena-sama." 


	5. part 6

A scraping noise sounded. It was Artena's chair moving across the stone  
floor. A rustling of cloth was the woman's standing, then came the  
sharp clicking of heels to rock as Artena exited the dining room, went  
out into the hallway. The footsteps faded away and Chloe's food swam in  
a hot salty sea.  
  
Chloe's sweaty hands were on her legs, clenching the material of the  
pants within each fist, soaking it through. She held her eyes shut  
because it was better than seeing everything blurry. Thin snot trickled  
into her mouth over the overhang of her upper lip. The little food  
Chloe had eaten was on the verge of successful rebellion.  
  
After a few minutes of silence interrupted occasionally by a wet  
sniffle, she knew Artena wasn't going to be coming right back. Which  
made things even worse, though she fought to make it not so. She wiped  
her face with the sleeves of her shirt, and they turned wet and heavy  
and sticky, but she recovered herself enough to realize her food had  
gone cold, and so had Artena's.  
  
She might not be good enough for Noir, but she could at least clean the  
dishes, so she set about doing so. Chloe carried the dishes into the  
kitchen, scraping the plates and other implements clean, and then  
scrubbed them in the sink. After each item was clean she dried her  
hands with one towel and then carefully did the same for the dish with a  
second. It was slow, doing both tasks by herself. Adjusting her weight  
was painful as she leaned to one side to pick something up off the  
counter for washing, or leaned to the other to pick one of the towels  
up. Plus she had to walk over to the appropriate cupboard for each  
dish, since there wasn't a clean counter to stack the things on. But  
Chloe wanted to get the job done before Artena returned to see her in  
the middle of another unhand led mess, so she kept at it. Each bit of  
inflicted pain her knee could throw against her was met with a  
surpassing desperate need to not fail in this, as well.  
  
She finished the dishes, then wiped the counter and table down  
carefully. The wolf chewing on her leg went along obligingly, and then  
there was no more to clean. Chloe wondered if Ranma's kick had done  
more than sprain, if something had torn or broken. It felt like it.  
  
Chloe hobbled to the room with the laundry supplies, and Artena was  
there, her back turned to the doorway Chloe stood in. She was kneeling  
on the floor with a wooden bucket before her, a metal rubbing board  
angled into the water. Artena scrubbed the cloak back and forth across  
the board, the sudsy water sloshing around in the wide pail. Chloe  
remained where she was, not wanting to get closer. Artena didn't  
respond to her presence at all.  
  
Her leg hurt, though she was leaning on the opposite limb and the  
doorframe. Should she ask Artena to look at it? Chloe had mentioned  
her injury when telling of her fight with Ranma, so the older woman  
already knew. Artena had also seen that she was having trouble walking.  
Maybe she didn't think it was that bad? Maybe she didn't care.  
  
"Artena-sama," Chloe said quietly. No response, the scrubbing  
continued. "I'm going to bed, Artena-sama."  
  
She waited a moment and then turned on her good knee and headed off to  
her room. When she got there she pushed herself into bed, pulling her  
leg around awkwardly, and raised the covers to her chin. She would wait  
until Artena came to tuck her in.  
  
Soon her knee started hurting, the position uncomfortable. Lying on her  
back made it stretched out, the natural tendency for the knee to be  
slightly bent foiled by the flat surface of the mattress and the weight  
of her leg. So she turned to her side, to let the knee lie flat against  
the bed. That left her other knee on top, a ball of pressure bearing  
down painfully.  
  
Chloe shoved her pillow down between her legs to ease the pressure.  
That helped immediately, the cool fluff soothing her injury. Soon she  
caught herself starting to drift off. She hadn't slept in two days, but  
she wanted Artena to come and say goodnight. She would wait.  
  
So she kept pinching herself as needed, opening her eyes to the maximum,  
employing little tricks to keep herself from falling asleep. She didn't  
know how long it was but eventually her legs started getting warm as her  
body heat was absorbed into the pillow. Her lower body started to  
sweat, the previously comfortable room temperature rising to the seek-  
shade zone. The sheets, too, got hotter, and the bed was a slow-cooking  
roaster that was just getting started.  
  
Flapping her sheets to get some fresh air between them didn't help but  
momentarily. Folding the sheets back and leaving herself exposed to the  
air quickly left her feeling cold except where the pillow was. She  
didn't want to remove that because then her knee would start hurting  
again. Instead, she pulled the sheets back over her body. They were  
cool for a little while and Chloe wondered how long she had been waiting  
for Artena.  
  
Before too long she had to move the sheets away again. A few times she  
could have fallen asleep but held out long enough to become  
uncomfortable again, which left her fidgety and restless and wide awake.  
Artena would be along any time now.  
  
The candle that had been burning on the nightstand beside her bed went  
out. The sudden blackness was only broken by little wisps of white  
smoke that streamed up from the burnt string that hid under a puddle of  
wax. Chloe stared wide-eyed and concentrating until the wick cooled.  
Tendrils of white spread across the room as her eyes adjusted to the  
lack of light. They made odd shapes, like clouds, and Chloe wondered if  
it was cloudy out, and if it would rain, cold water falling upon Ranma  
in a flood of tiny bullets. She hoped so. She hoped he went running  
for shelter and slipped on a wet rock or in the mud and then hit his  
head and died.  
  
Chloe noticed that the smoke was gone and wondered how long it had been.  
How long had she been waiting? Was Artena still scrubbing at the cloak,  
whoever it belonged to, or had she finished and decided not to tuck  
Chloe in? Was it because she thought Chloe was already asleep? No, if  
she cared she would have come to check anyway. So Artena was either  
still trying to work out those bloodstains or she was in bed and  
sleeping without any concern and perhaps with a bit of resentment  
towards the undeserving. Chloe wasn't fit to live with Artena; that  
girl was, but not Chloe.  
  
That girl did everything better. Everything but the knives, and so  
Chloe practiced with those every day, even though the girl would still  
win their fights, Chloe was the more skilled in that respect. So she  
practiced to keep it so.  
  
The high, small window set in one wall of her room let in a bit of light  
and soon Chloe could see her cupboard and the door and the stones built  
up around and above and below her. They were all in varying shades of  
black and dark blue shadow but it was enough for her to watch the door  
in its motionlessness, waiting. Artena would come to tuck her in, just  
like she always did except for the night of Ranma's arrival. She would.  
  
So Chloe stared at the door, eyes wide-open in alertness, silent,  
expectant, and ignoring how the sheet below her head became damp where  
it touched her down-turned cheek.  
  
  
Ranma woke, looked up sleepily, and got whacked in the eyeball by a  
raindrop. Then he scowled and pulled his shirt collar up over his head  
for a bit of protection for the light barrage of chilled suicide  
bombers. Problem fixed, he went back to unconsciousness.  
  
  
Ranma's arm was sore the next day all around where Chloe had stabbed  
him. Moving his arm wasn't too painful, but it was reminiscent of over-  
enthusiastic training sessions that had been punctuated by deep bruises  
that went all the way to the bone. That was what his wound felt like.  
The scab over the cut itself looked healthy enough and he guessed that  
his arm would be fully repaired within just a few days.  
  
His hand was bothering him far more, however. Every time he clenched  
his fist, opened it up, or tried to hold something he would get a  
burning sensation like from a disturbed paper cut. With the sharpness  
of Chloe's knife and the fact that the blade had barely done more than  
open a flap of skin on his hand and cause a lot of blood to spill out, a  
paper cut was just a less affected version of what he had.  
  
Everything he did that raised a sweat dropped his hand into a vat of  
salty acid. He hoped that cut went away quickly.  
  
For now, though, he snacked on some more grapes. Yum. Grapes for  
breakfast, lunch, and dinner of every day. He loved it. If Chloe came  
out he might just skin and eat her for the meat. Not that he knew how  
to do the skinning, his father always did that, but still, he was going  
to have to find something else to fill his belly with. Maybe sneak into  
the Manor and steal some food? It couldn't be that hard.  
  
After finishing breakfast he looked over at the Manor to make sure Chloe  
wasn't around, then headed back to the coliseum. Time to get some more  
practice in. He knew what he was doing wrong now.  
  
  
A bird mocked him, its voice shrill and unreasonable, proclaiming that  
it could throw knives better than he could. Ranma wondered if it was  
right. He'd spent a few more hours trying to improve, to no avail.  
Maybe he was some kind of knife cripple. Did handicaps get that  
specific?  
  
Ranma finished collecting his knives and returned to his throwing point.  
No matter which method he used, right handed throwing, left handed  
throwing, or throwing with both hands, his performance was abysmal. He  
quit using his injured hand after only a few tries--his accuracy went  
down even more, and the flapping skin started to leak blood from  
underneath. The other hand didn't do too much better, but he'd keep on  
trying it. He refused to give up, though the bird's voice grew louder  
and more insistent.  
  
Some of his knives sought out avian intelligence on the situation but  
were turned down without being received. That damn bird.  
  
Soon enough he was hungry again. The bird became more than a simple  
annoyance. It was mocking him, saying, 'Eat me. Eat me, if you can!'  
while chuckling in its insane way. Ranma didn't know what kind of bird  
it was but the thing looked like it tasted non-grapelike and had a meaty  
texture. That was a big plus.  
  
The sun bore down and his arm sweated and ached and whined like crazy as  
he worked it for hours without a break. His rebellious limb tried to  
toss itself to freedom with every abusive exercise of it, but he refused  
to let it go. It was his arm. He owned it, no matte what it might  
think of the matter.  
  
He threw knife after knife at the wooden post, the only difference  
coming when the bird would settle down for a minute, on the grass or on  
a stack of bricks or even on top of the post. Then he'd throw a few  
knives at it, which never hit but scared the feathered fellow into  
taking a walk, its obscenities banished temporarily. Next open season  
was again declared on the target and he went to town, unsuccessfully.  
  
This simple practice just wasn't getting him anywhere. He knew his  
father would have been able to figure out the problem, but the old man  
wasn't around. Which way to Japan? South? East? West? He didn't  
think it was north, mountains in their white-bearded and cranky dotage  
could be seen up that way.  
  
Ranma picked up his knives and went to go get lunch. The bird followed  
him like some demonic imp sent to make his life a nagging hell, poking,  
prodding at him with its incessant presence.  
  
He kept an eye out as he walked towards the Manor but Chloe was nowhere  
around. Was she still upset about losing to him? He hadn't beaten her  
that badly--his kick to her knee shouldn't have hurt the girl that much,  
and she'd gotten him twice with her knife. She'd been the one unable to  
fight at the end of their match, but she hadn't done too badly. Better  
than anybody but his father and some of the dojo masters he had fought  
while traveling. So where was she?  
  
Ranma ate from the outside edge of the grape field closest to the Manor,  
watching the building entrance in between chomps on fleshy victims.  
Maybe Chloe had gone to the village, or to somewhere else nearby, and  
since he hadn't seen her leave...  
  
He frowned. Chloe leaving when he wasn't paying attention was no good.  
He'd never find out which way to the village or Japan or anything, like  
that. So had she left, or was she just inside the Manor? Maybe she was  
outside and somewhere he couldn't see her?  
  
Ranma finished another grape and stood, then turned around to look at  
the hills surrounding him. He didn't see Chloe, but she could have just  
passed out of sight on the backside of a hill, or gotten far enough away  
that she was a small, slow-moving dot that was just unnoticeable.  
  
Well, there was one place he could check...and it'd have food, too.  
  
He studied the Manor intently. He knew that there were windows on all  
sides, plus the front doorway. Big building, to have only one entrance.  
The terrain surrounding it was bare enough that anybody paying attention  
would be likely to see his approach. Which meant getting there as fast  
as possible was the best way to cut down on visibility.  
  
Ranma ran quickly towards the front door, thinking sneaky thoughts,  
quiet thoughts, thoughts about nobody being around but a few bunnies and  
an annoying bird. A hundred feet, seventy-five, fifty, twenty-five,  
fifteen, ten, five. He stopped abruptly when the doorway filled before  
he got there and Artena stood blocking his passage. She didn't look  
quite as friendly as he remembered.  
  
"Uh...hi," he said, slightly out of breath. Grin. Happy thoughts,  
happy thoughts, starving-little-angel thoughts. Feed me!  
  
"Why are you here?" Artena asked. The annoying bird flapped its way  
over his head and settled on her shoulder. It stared at him and Artena  
paid it no mind. Weird.  
  
"Ummm..." Ranma took a cautious sniff, tried not to give himself away.  
No food, dammit. "Which way is Japan?"  
  
"Any direction will get you closer to Japan," was her response.  
  
For some reason he hadn't expected her to tell him. "Right. Say, where  
is Chloe? I haven't seen her."  
  
"Why do you want to know?"  
  
"She invited me for lunch..."  
  
The bird laughed at him and he wondered if he could shove one of his  
knives down its throat. Artena's mouth just twitched slightly. "We  
already ate lunch," she said. "If you do the dishes you can join us for  
dinner."  
  
"Oh, well, maybe later. When is Chloe going to be out?" He could  
probably get Chloe mad enough to tell him where Japan was, just to make  
him go away, but he was sure it wouldn't work with Artena. It wasn't  
working with Chloe so far, either, though. The Saotome School of  
Anything-Goes Being Annoying was usually more successful than this.  
Maybe it didn't work as well on girls? Or maybe Chloe knew all the  
tricks? It sure seemed like it.  
  
"Not for a few days. She sprained one of her knees and has to stay off  
of it for a while." She looked sad. So did the bird, oddly enough.  
Why was it on Artena's shoulder? It abandoned the sad look and mocked  
him in some strange birdish manner. He wasn't sure how that worked, but  
something about the way it was looking at him was definitely scornful.  
  
"Do you want to tell her you're sorry?" Artena asked, distracting him  
from the avian.  
  
"What? No." It was Chloe's fault anyway, attacking him like that.  
Plus she'd ripped his shirt. Twice, actually. Well, it had been her  
shirt first, but it was his now so that didn't matter. "I didn't even  
kick her that hard."  
  
The bird laughed and launched itself into the air, flew off. Artena  
paid it no attention, and Ranma considered trying to hit it with one of  
his knives. Soon it was a tiny black dot in a clean Etch-A-Sketch sky.  
  
Ranma turned back to Artena and notice how precisely in the center of  
the doorway she stood. He hadn't seen her fight any, but knew he  
wouldn't make it past her if he tried, so he didn't. "Okay. Well, I'm  
going, then. Tell Chloe I said 'hi'."  
  
"I will," was her response, the slight smile on her face again.  
  
Ranma headed off after the bird, keeping an eye out for slower moving  
critters. Maybe he could tag a bunny or something. Anything would be  
better than more grapes.  
  
  
Chloe looked up from her book as Artena entered the room. "Artena-  
sama?" she asked. A pillow was propped under her knee for support, and  
Artena had brought her another one earlier to put her back against so  
she could sit up properly.  
  
"Ranma came by," the woman said. "He told me to tell you that he said  
'hello'."  
  
"Um, okay. Did his arm look infected?" A brief prayer.  
  
"No, it looked fine. It will be well-healed soon. Probably before your  
knee is."  
  
Chloe nodded. It would be. Ranma was the better fighter, so he'd  
recover faster. That girl did, definitely. "Did he say anything else,  
Artena-sama?"  
  
"He wanted to know where Japan was."  
  
Yeah, so he could walk there. "Did you tell him?" Chloe had to kill  
him. If he left, that'd be harder. Could she get a rocket launcher and  
kill him with that? It'd stop his grape filching, but Artena didn't  
seem to care much about that. Probably not.  
  
"No, I didn't. He'll stay here."  
  
"Thank you, Artena-sama."  
  
"How are you going to kill him, Chloe?"  
  
"I don't know, Artena-sama." Unless she could find him sleeping, Ranma  
held the advantage. Her knee testified to that.  
  
"Well, keep thinking on it, then. I'm sure you'll come up with  
something," Artena said encouragingly. "I have to go clean the dishes  
now, so call if you need anything." She smiled at Chloe and then  
stepped out of the room without waiting for a response.  
  
Chloe looked back down at her book. She was rereading Alice in  
Wonderland, since she hadn't gone back to the village to get a  
replacement yet. The book had been in one of the other rooms, Chloe  
forgot where she had left it, but Artena had brought it to her that  
morning, along with another pillow. She'd been cheerful and as kind as  
ever, checking Chloe's knee carefully so as to not cause any pain.  
  
She hadn't stayed awake long enough for Artena to tuck her in, and had  
been woken to breakfast in bed. Artena had carried in a chair to keep  
her company during the meal, handing Chloe her glass of milk when she  
wanted it. There wasn't a place on the bed to set the cup down, so  
Chloe was glad about that. Lunch had been delivered the same way and  
they had talked normally during both.  
  
Artena had said nothing about the cloak and whether she had fixed it.  
Chloe hadn't asked, though she wanted to. Artena hadn't given it back,  
so she would assume it to be trashed. Better that than simply  
unreturned from lack of faith. She was pretty sure which it was,  
though.  
  
Chloe sighed, put her book down, and wondered how she was going to kill  
Ranma. Catching him when he was asleep or going to the bathroom was all  
she could come up with. Both of those would require either great luck  
or an ability to follow Ranma completely undetected until he engaged in  
one of those activities, or something else gave her a similar  
opportunity.  
  
She was pretty sure she wasn't skilled enough at sneaking to avoid  
Ranma's notice, and a week and a half wasn't enough time to improve the  
necessary amount--especially when some of that time would be spent  
waiting for her knee to heal. She really only had about a week that she  
would be able to use in order to kill Ranma. That wasn't enough time to  
get better. Which meant that she was going to have to get lucky,  
instead, or trick the pigtailed boy into making himself vulnerable.  
  
She had already pulled the weepy female routine once and it had worked,  
but she didn't know if even someone as dumb as Ranma would fall for it  
twice from the same person. But there were other ways of getting to  
him, to be sure. Pretending to be hurt was only the most obvious one.  
  
Some of the others would require Artena's assistance, however, and Chloe  
wasn't sure if that would be allowed. She was supposed to kill Ranma  
herself, not with somebody else's help. Artena could easily execute  
Ranma at any time; that she hadn't done so indicated it was supposed to  
be a test of Chloe's abilities.  
  
So, no help from Artena. She wanted to kill Ranma on her own anyway.  
But how?  
  
  
Ranma chased the rabbit. It hopped to the left, to the right, more to  
the right, darted between the grape posts and took off down the row on  
the other side. When Ranma got to the end of the row he was in he  
turned to where the bunny had escaped. It was gone. Damn rabbit.  
  
The grapes laughed at him. Well, they'd get theirs. He'd see to that.  
  
The bird had taken off, he'd not seen the thing since it left him and  
Artena standing at the entrance to the Manor. Then that damn rabbit had  
shown up and taken up the mocking game. What was it with the wildlife  
here? Were they trained in psychological warfare? Some variant of the  
Saotome School of Anything-Goes Being Annoying? No, his pop was back in  
Japan, wherever that was, and wouldn't have taught anybody but Ranma  
anyway.  
  
Any direction gets him closer to Japan than staying here. Heh. That  
was true, but it really didn't help him any. The world was a big place.  
He didn't know how far he was from Japan or what direction he had to go  
in to get back home, but he was sure that picking a direction randomly  
would probably make it take a long, long time.  
  
Which meant that he was going to stay here, wandering around in the  
valley with no clue where to go. The grapes would do him in before too  
long, Ranma was sure. Practicing with those knives had gotten old and  
annoying. He wasn't getting any better, he didn't know why; he  
carefully copied Chloe's movements and the accurate throws that she made  
almost every try were wildly varying misses for him. So that was no  
good. Plus, Chloe was going to be inside the Manor for the next few  
days, too, which meant that along with not wanting to practice he would  
have nobody to play with. Boring.  
  
Ranma started walking through the grape field again, looking for more  
rabbits. Even a simple opponent was better than none at all. And if he  
did catch one, he could finally eat something different for a change,  
break up the routine of grape after grape for days on end. How he'd  
ever enjoyed the things he had no idea.  
  
  
Chloe sat on the ground out in front of the Manor, her back up against a  
tree and a pillow set underneath her knees. Artena had put a second  
case on the pillow to make sure it didn't get dirty. Her book was on  
her lap, angled nicely because her legs were raised somewhat.  
  
Where was Ranma? She had expected him to show up shortly after she came  
outside, but she was already a good ways through the book and it'd been  
a couple of hours since he had come by shortly after lunch. If he'd  
decided to try leaving again, well, that'd make things difficult.  
Tracking him down when he left in a random direction and had a lead of  
half a week after her leg healed would be almost impossible. The only  
way she'd be able to find him is if he turned back towards the valley or  
if he lucked out in his bearing and ended up coming across the village.  
They wouldn't do anything to a linguistically inarticulate young boy,  
not without instructions, but if she showed up asking about him they  
would give her whatever assistance they needed. But that was only if he  
went by there, and the odds on that were rather small when he would be  
taking a blind guess.  
  
Archimedes touched down a few feet in front of her, head cocked to the  
side so it could look upon her directly. The bird hopped forward a few  
times until it was beside Chloe's legs.  
  
Chloe smiled at her. Artena hadn't thought the name fit. The bird  
wasn't that smart, she had said, but Chloe thought the opposite.  
Archimedes was the most intelligent bird she'd ever met. Archimedes  
wasn't a female name, though, so Artena had been right about that.  
  
"Hello," she said. "Artena doesn't have anything for you to do?"  
  
The bird's head shook back and forth, a quick, jerky set of motions.  
Smart though it was, its communication abilities were still rather  
limited. It seemed to understand her well enough, though.  
  
"Have you seen Ranma? The boy that's been here lately?"  
  
Archimedes stared at her, and Chloe wondered if it didn't understand,  
then it turned itself to face out towards the grape fields, a bit west  
of southwest. Ranma must be out by the far edge of the fruit, probably  
gorging himself on the things again.  
  
Chloe nodded to the bird when it turned back to look at her, to indicate  
that she understood. Its response was to hop closer to her again and  
look directly at her lap, where Alice in Wonderland lie. Chloe grinned,  
delighted, and put her book on the ground, then her hands to her sides  
to show that the coast was clear. Archimedes jumped up on to her lap,  
facing sideways so that it could continue to look at her. The impacts  
as it landed on her were light, barely noticeable. The book had been  
hardbound and heavier.  
  
Slowly, Chloe brought one of her hands up. Archimedes tensed slightly.  
Chloe could crush the bird in that hand, if she were of a mind to, and  
she was sure that Archimedes knew that. But it remained still as she  
brushed her extended index finger down the back of the smooth, egg-  
fragile head. Its beak pulled upwards and her finger dug in slightly to  
the crook between skull and back. She scratched, and Archimedes  
crooned, a soft vibration passing into her fingertip and legs.  
  
"Hold it still so I can chop off its head," Ranma said quietly. "I'm  
gonna eat that bird." 


	6. part 7

Chloe yelped in surprise, covered Archimedes by bending forward,  
holding her arms in the space between her legs and chest. Ranma was a  
few feet in front of her, to the left side enough that he had  
approached from behind the bird. Chloe hadn't been paying attention  
at all.  
  
"You are NOT going to eat Archimedes!" It was Artena's bird, her  
bird. If he tried to eat it she'd shove one of her knives down his  
throat and see how sharp his mindless appetite was. She could feel  
Archimedes trembling against her, but the bird didn't struggle to get  
free, which only would have hurt it.  
  
Ranma stood still, a knife in each hand, glaring at her. "Why not?  
I'm hungry! And I hate that bird! It won't leave me alone!"  
  
"I don't care! She's my bird, you jerk, and if you touch her I'll  
kill you!" Her neck hurt from looking up at him with her body facing  
the ground, but she stayed there, still, holding Archimedes  
protectively.  
  
Ranma relaxed slightly, his hands dropping most of the way to his  
sides. "Well, feed me, then," he said. "You're costing me my dinner,  
right? So you have to make up for it."  
  
"I do not! Archimedes isn't your dinner!"  
  
The knives came back up, and he smirked. "Wanna fight for it?" One  
of them pointed at her knee. He'd probably miss in a throw even from  
this distance, clumsy imbecile that he was, but if he tried to stab  
her, he'd have no problems.  
  
Chloe flung one of her hands towards Ranma and he flinched, suddenly  
awkward, probably because he wasn't sure what to do with the two  
knives in his hands while being attacked. But she hadn't thrown  
anything, and she took his hesitation as an opportunity to sit back  
up, freeing Archimedes, and cup the bird in her hands. Chloe yanked  
her arms skywards, propelling Archimedes into the air, the bird  
narrowly missing several of the tree branches above. Archimedes  
recovered quickly and flew up, went through the branches, and then  
took off towards the Manor.  
  
Chloe grabbed the pillow from behind her back and whipped it at Ranma,  
hitting him in the face before he could throw a knife at Archimedes.  
She looked to see if the distraction worked and saw her bird escape,  
flying into the Manor's open door and probably going straight to  
Artena. Maybe Artena would come out and kill the boy.  
  
Her pillow smacked into the side of her head, knocking it into the  
tree behind her. The pillow fell back into her lap and she put a hand  
to the back of her head to feel for injury, rubbing where it hurt.  
"You jerk," she said, looking at Ranma again.  
  
He just grinned at her and held up his hands. The knives were gone  
and she could see the hilts of a number of the things sticking out of  
his pockets. Replacing them was her book, closed, the page she'd been  
reading lost. "What's this?" he asked.  
  
"It's a book." Her own hand dropped back to her side, and Chloe  
wished she hadn't decided to leave her knives in her room. "Give it  
back."  
  
"What's it about?"  
  
"It's about a little boy who got shoved into a sack full of useless  
kittens and tossed in the river. Now give it back."  
  
Ranma gave her an odd look, stared at the cover, which just held the  
title, then opened to a random page. He frowned. "I can't read it."  
  
"It's in French." Moron.  
  
He grunted, snapped the book shut, then tossed it to her. "Why don't  
you read it in Japanese?"  
  
Chloe caught it by the spine and started looking for where she'd been.  
Since she'd just read it a few days earlier it was hard to remember  
her place. "Because it's not my book, and the person who owns it only  
reads French. Now go away." She looked back towards the Manor and  
saw that Artena was standing in the doorway, watching.  
  
Ranma noticed the gesture and looked, too, saw Artena, then turned  
back to Chloe. "You owe me dinner," he said.  
  
"No, I don't. If you want Artena-sama to make you some food, go ask  
her."  
  
Ranma crouched down, facing her. "No way. She just wants to make me  
do the dishes."  
  
If Artena had a gun, she could shoot him from where she was standing.  
Ranma would never even know what hit him, his head would just snap  
slightly, a wet pinging noise would sound as the bullet ripped through  
his brain and bounced off the inside of his skull, and then he would  
fall over, legs still bent like a frog's, dead before he hit the  
ground. Artena did have a gun, Chloe was sure, but she never took the  
shot and Ranma remained alive.  
  
Chloe was glad, because if Artena killed him it would be because  
Artena had decided she was unable to do it herself, that she was a  
failure as Noir.  
  
"If you told Artena-sama you were incapable of doing the dishes, she  
might feed you anyway." Chloe smirked slightly at Ranma's hungry  
look. "Try saying you are mentally handicap."  
  
"Hey!"  
  
"You can stand and both sets of fingers are usable. That's all you  
need for drying dishes. Mental handicap is all you could claim."  
  
"I ain't mentally handicapped!" he lied, outraged.  
  
"You're limiting yourself to eating stolen grapes because you don't  
want to rub some dishes down with a towel. You're a moron," Chloe  
told him.  
  
"I am not! I just hate doing dishes!" Ranma was standing now,  
glaring down at her. "Now you take that back!"  
  
"Or what?" Chloe lifted her injured knee slightly. "Will you kick me  
again? Stab me with one of my own knives, which you stole?"  
  
His fists were tight and shook slightly, his face red with anger. He  
stepped forward and her knee tensed. This would hurt.  
  
Ranma stopped, turned, and stalked away, towards the grape fields, and  
Chloe breathed out slowly. He would have smashed his heel into her  
knee, had been just about to do it, but he'd stopped. She wondered  
why.  
  
"Are you going to be able to do it this way?" Artena asked from beside  
her.  
  
Chloe looked at the woman, wondering when she had come over. "Yes,  
Artena-sama. It's just... difficult. But yes."  
  
Artena nodded acquiescence. "Be careful. Ranma was very angry. He  
views fighting as a game, and a fun one, so attacking him is fine, but  
you can get him mad in other ways."  
  
"I know, Artena-sama."  
  
"Good." Smile. "If you need it, he can eat with us sometimes. Only  
if it is necessary, though."  
  
"Thank you, Artena-sama. That will help." If she could feed Ranma,  
this would be a lot easier, Chloe was sure.  
  
"Archimedes is inside. It will probably be a few days before I have  
to send her out again, so you can check on her later, if you want.  
She got a bit of a fright, it seems, but she's fine."  
  
"Ranma wanted to eat her."  
  
Artena's smile froze, dropped completely. "Make sure he doesn't do  
that. It's very important."  
  
"Okay, Artena-sama. I will." Chloe knew that if Ranma ate  
Archimedes, Artena would probably kill him herself.  
  
"Make sure," Artena repeated, then, "I'm going back inside. Call me  
if you want to come in or need something."  
  
Chloe watched as Artena walked back to the Manor and went inside. Had  
she already been on the way over when Ranma was about to hit her?  
Ranma hadn't been facing in the right direction, but could he have  
sensed Artena coming?  
  
Chloe hadn't, and never could unless the woman let herself be  
detected.  
  
She sighed and tried to find her page again. It was going to be a  
long wait for her knee to heal.  
  
  
Ranma stomped carefully through the grape fields. It was difficult,  
being barefoot, so he was watching his step. He purposefully made as  
much noise as he could, smacking his hands against posts as he walked  
by, kicking one every once in a while, the wood rough and loud and  
smacking against the soles of his feet. No rabbits had been scared  
out yet, though.  
  
Chloe was annoying. He'd just been playing around with her about the  
bird, he wasn't gonna kill her pet no matter how maddening the two of  
them were. But she coulda given him some food as compensation anyway.  
It'd only be fair. Instead she'd gotten all nasty and pissed him off  
when he was trying to be nice because of her messed up knee, which was  
her fault for starting the fight anyway. Stupid girl.  
  
*SMACK*  
  
A fluffy head poked itself out from nowhere and stared at him. They  
both froze, then the bunny took off and Ranma ran in pursuit. It  
switched to the next lane over but continued in the same direction, so  
Ranma followed it.  
  
They hit the end of the field, the separator gigantic compared to the  
rows they'd just left, and the rabbit turned away from him, ran down  
the length of the pathway. Big mistake.  
  
Ranma's knives were in his hands now, the injured one slick and  
stinging with sweat and a bit of blood. He threw, the bunny didn't  
change direction and just stayed straight ahead. Both blades missed,  
the quarry turned back into the fields, and he continued, not far  
behind. Fifteen feet into the row the rabbit threw itself between  
posts, the vines running between stopping him from doing the same, and  
kept going. It was gone.  
  
"Dammit!" There went supper.  
  
He went back to pick up the knives he'd tossed, then reentered the  
field. It was in there somewhere and it wasn't like he had anything  
better to do than search for supper.  
  
  
Chloe was helped into her chair, then Artena scooted it forward  
gently. "Thank you," she said, and Artena went to sit herself. They  
began to eat.  
  
Between bites, Artena asked, "Has Ranma come back yet?"  
  
"No, Artena-sama. Not since he left earlier." Where was he? She  
hadn't seen him walked towards the coliseum. Maybe she'd missed it,  
reading her book, but she didn't think she had. He couldn't have been  
eating grapes the whole time. Chloe was pretty sure he couldn't have.  
  
"The other girl will get here on the last day. She'll be staying for  
a little while, a few weeks, this time."  
  
Chloe grinned happily. "She's coming to visit? I'll kill Ranma  
before she gets here. I will!" It'd been a while since she had seen  
the girl, the other Noir. Months, she wasn't sure how many, had  
passed. Much too long.  
  
"Good." Artena's pleased smile made the news even better. Ranma was  
going to die, and then the other girl was coming to visit! It would  
be perfect!  
  
She spent the rest of the meal plotting the boy's demise and thinking  
about how nice the following weeks would be.  
  
  
Hide and seek was a horrible game, when you were it. He walked up and  
down the rows, looking for some cute little critter to pop up and make  
itself edible, but found nothing. The grapes passed on each side and  
his stomach grew increasingly demanding, but he ignored both. Ranma  
was going to eat something else this time. He was!  
  
Step. Step. Step.  
  
Ranma's eyes narrowed.  
  
Step. Step. Step.  
  
The grapes were getting closer. He wasn't sure how, but the rows were  
becoming more narrow, the posts and vines and bunches getting bigger,  
pressing in. The dull purple became brighter, more alive, more  
menacing. They were watching him, hundreds and thousands and millions  
of eyes staring, filled with malice.  
  
Step. Step. Step.  
  
A grape reached out and touched his arm, and that was it. He ripped  
into the enemy. They ran away shrieking, but they weren't fast enough  
and their numbers dwindled quickly from his attack. The stragglers  
were picked off first, then the main body took a hit to its center and  
collapsed. It was over.  
  
Afterwards he lied on his back, a belly full of juicy grape flesh,  
surrounded by seeds. Even if he caught a rabbit or bird or something  
else now, he was too full to eat it.  
  
"This sucks."  
  
Soon he started feeling drowsy, his digestive system declaring war on  
the malicious little buggers. Ranma wondered who would win, and fell  
asleep.  
  
  
The early bird gets the worm, but Ranma wanted something a little bit  
bigger and not quite so slimy. The sun was only partially risen, and  
he was gonna catch him a rabbit. They all seemed to still be in their  
little rabbit holes, with better sense than to be up this early,  
though. He'd get one eventually.  
  
Instead of checking the grape fields, today he was checking the area  
around the Manor.  
  
Ranma tripped, his foot falling an opening in the ground that he  
hadn't noticed. He yanked his leg out quickly, happy that he'd not  
twisted it, and inspected the hole. He put his face up against it,  
the thing was almost as big around as his head, and looked inside.  
Nothing. If there were critters home, they were deep. There had to  
be rabbits in there somewhere, right?  
  
Or it could be a snake as big around as his head, about to come out  
for a morning snack of its own.  
  
Ranma pulled back quickly, looking suspiciously at the hole. Maybe  
there weren't any rabbits in there.  
  
He stood, stepped carefully around the hole, and then continued his  
search for breakfast.  
  
  
A few grapes can taste great, but Ranma was beginning to suspect that  
there was some kinda aftereffect to eating the things. A few, no  
problem. A lot, they start to get old. Eat hundreds of the things  
for days on end, though, and you about die. It felt like that one  
time he'd eaten two pounds of butter, yuck. He'd never touched the  
stuff again, and never would, either.  
  
He'd eaten a lot more grapes than two pounds worth, though.  
  
Ranma wobbled over to Chloe, who was reading under the tree again, and  
collapsed to the ground. He lay on his side, facing her, in case she  
tried anything even with her bum knee. She didn't even look up, and  
Archimedes glared at him from her place on Chloe's shoulder.  
  
He breathed out slowly, then back in through his nose, and smelt grape  
air. Gah.  
  
"Isn't Archimedes a boy's name?" he asked.  
  
She frowned, but continued to read.  
  
"It is, isn't it? I saw this movie with this kid who pulled a sword  
out of this stone, Exterminator, and this old guy in it had a bird  
named Archimedes, and it was a guy. So how come you named it  
Archimedes?"  
  
He stared at her, then looked around lazily for a rock to toss at the  
girl.  
  
"It's not that easy to tell the difference," she said, finally, right  
after he found a nice round one.  
  
"Uh, yeah it is. See, you just--"  
  
"Not when you're three years old."  
  
"Oh." That would make it a bit harder. "Still, that was pretty  
stupid."  
  
The bird chirped angrily, and Ranma wondered if he should throw the  
rock at it, instead. Wait, he'd probably hit Chloe in the face if he  
tried. Not that that was a bad thing. Getting her mad wouldn't be  
boring, at least. Plus that'd happen even if he did hit the bird. He  
took aim, then tossed, and the rock flew past the tree without hitting  
anything. Figures.  
  
How boring. Too bad Pop wasn't here, he'd have somebody to spar.  
Kata was dull and all the ones he knew were easy anyway. Chloe was  
busted as far as fun went, and he didn't think Artena would be any fun  
to play with. She wasn't even his age, and she couldn't be as good as  
his pop was, so why bother?  
  
"You still reading that book about the boy and the bagful of cats?" he  
asked.  
  
Both Chloe and the bird looked at him funny.  
  
"What?"  
  
"Well, yes," she said. "It's a long book."  
  
"So read it to me."  
  
Chloe seemed annoyed, but flipped back to the start. "'There once was  
a boy who was shoved into a sack full of useless kittens and tossed in  
the river,'" she began.  
  
Creepy.  
  
"'Luckily the kittens were able to claw their way out of the bag  
before they drowned, leaving the boy to fend for himself. Since he  
couldn't swim he fell to the bottom, where he was found by a merman,  
who poked the kid with his trident. The boy tried to run away but was  
too slow. The merman captured him and took him to see the king.'"  
  
Chloe flipped to the next page, then resumed. "'The king...'"  
  
  
She reached the end of the third make-believe chapter and glanced up  
to see that Ranma had his eyes closed. His mouth was hanging  
partially open and a some kind of bug was in front of it, eyeing the  
opening with consideration. Imbecile.  
  
"Archimedes," she said hopefully, but quietly, to her bird, who was  
still on her shoulder, "go get one of my knives."  
  
A blank look was her only response. Now would be the time. She'd  
deliberately left her knives inside, to keep herself from trying to  
take a chance that her knee would prevent her from succeeding in  
anyway. And now she could have slit Ranma's throat with the most  
minimal effort. It wasn't fair.  
  
She didn't have anything she could use to attack Ranma with on her.  
The boy was stronger and would wake in time to overpower her if she  
tried to strangle him. Nothing else she could have done right now  
would have worked, either. Yelling for Artena would just wake Ranma  
up, which wasn't help at all, and she was supposed to kill him herself  
anyway.  
  
Chloe sighed, disappointed, and turned back to where she had left off  
reading the real story. She still had plenty of time.  
  
  
Ranma woke, slightly. Artena was in front of him, picking Chloe up.  
One of the woman's arms was under Chloe's knees with one of the  
pillows padding the contact, and the other was under Chloe's arms,  
holding her up by the armpits. Chloe was asleep.  
  
He briefly considered running inside while they were busy and grabbing  
some food. He wasn't hungry again yet, though, and he had an odd  
taste in his mouth anyway. Probably from all those grapes, disgusting  
things. Plus he wasn't done napping.  
  
He closed his eyes and drifted back off.  
  
  
The sun had moved and the tree no longer shaded him. Everything  
behind his closed eyelids was a bright orange and that wasn't  
something he could sleep through. Ranma yawned and sat up, blinking  
about and seeing that it was a little after noon. He was hungry  
again. Time to take another shot at hunting.  
  
He stood and began making his way slowly back over to the grape  
fields. Stupid critters probably loved the things. This time he  
wasn't going to give up until he had something new to eat.  
  
  
Ranma collapsed to the ground, panting, completely out of breath and  
energy. Run here, run there, no matter what he did he couldn't catch  
any rabbits. It was like they had some kind of early warning system  
to let them know he was coming. He was sneaking about completely  
silent, yet they still knew when he was approaching and took off  
instantly. And they were fast, too, bouncing all over the place in  
seemingly random directions that he could never guess right ahead of  
time. None of his knives got very close to even tagging one. Well,  
not close enough.  
  
There had to be some kinda trick to doing this, but he didn't have a  
clue what it was. He was already getting hungry enough that the  
grapes were looking appetizing again, dammit. That shouldn't be  
happening!  
  
He exhaled slowly, completely, and then stood again. No more grapes.  
Nope! Some grape-eating critter it would be, instead!  
  
  
Chloe was back under the tree again, reading her book and taking tiny,  
neat bites out of sandwich. Oh, how he hated her. "Gimme that."  
  
"No." Another bite. "Go ask Artena-sama to make you one."  
  
"I don't wanna do the dishes!"  
  
Bite, chew, swallow. "Well, making a sandwich isn't something that  
would make more dishes dirty. All she has to do is cut stuff up. So  
she might make you one if you ask nicely and she hasn't already washed  
the dishes."  
  
"...you think she would?"  
  
"No."  
  
Ranma eyed what was left of her lunch. "Wanna make a bet?"  
  
Chloe held on to her sandwich with both hands, looking at him  
suspiciously now. "What?"  
  
"I bet... that... um... a bunch of grapes would fill you up better  
than half a sandwich would!" That was so lame.  
  
"Okay," she said. "So go get me some grapes and we'll see."  
  
No way. "You'll eat what's left while I'm gone, won't you?"  
  
She smiled. "I won't."  
  
Ranma stared at her. "You better not."  
  
"You better hurry. I don't know how long I can wait." Chloe glanced  
down at the sandwich. "It looks really good, doesn't it? I sure  
liked the first half."  
  
He took off running.  
  
  
Chloe stared as Ranma kicked up a small dust cloud in his wake. If he  
wanted to run the quarter mile there and back just to earn a sandwich,  
that was fine with her. Seemed stupid of him, though. What was wrong  
with grapes? She ate them all the time. His mother must have taken a  
few bad falls when carrying him, because Ranma had problems.  
  
She set the sandwich down between her legs, on the pillow beneath.  
Ranma would be back for it quick enough. He was already halfway  
there. Must be the motivation.  
  
Chloe picked her book back up and resumed reading.  
  
  
Ranma came to a stop in front of the sandwich-holding girl, a huge  
lump of grapes almost as big as he was cradled to his chest. They  
were large and heavy things and he doubted even he could eat the whole  
bunch without getting full. Chloe had a smaller appetite.  
  
"Here ya go," he said, and dropped the grapes in her lap, the sandwich  
snatched from her hand sometime later in that same second.  
  
Ranma took a big bite out of it as he sat down and suddenly a third of  
the thing was already gone. Must take smaller bites. "Ow." A huge  
shock jolted through the lower back corners of his mouth. He hated  
that. Another sign that he'd been living on grapes for too long, if a  
simple sandwich could give his taste buds a heart attack.  
  
Chloe started on the grapes. She ate one, he took a bite, she ate  
another, he took another bite. After a few repetitions of this his  
sandwich was gone. Ranma licked at his fingers, and Chloe ate another  
grape. There were over a hundred of the left. It wasn't fair.  
  
"Are you gonna eat all those?" He didn't really want to, but he had  
to have something else. That sandwich half was so tiny!  
  
"Yes."  
  
"You're going to eat every one of those grapes?" he asked,  
incredulous.  
  
"Yes. Go get your own, if you want some." She was annoyed! At him!  
  
"Fine." He'd watch, and she'd have to eat EVERY ONE!  
  
Chloe ignored him and resumed reading her book, popping grapes into  
her mouth regularly. He noticed that she turned the book pages with a  
hand other than the one she tossed the messy seeds away from herself  
with.  
  
"Read more of that story," Ranma said to her. "I fell asleep,  
earlier."  
  
She looked up, sighed, and then turned back to near the beginning of  
the book. "When did you fall asleep?"  
  
He tried to remember. "Um, the boy was sent by the mermaid king to  
fetch a pearl that an evil diver stole from a great big octopus."  
  
"It was an oyster, not an octopus." Chloe flipped a few pages.  
  
"Yeah, something like that."  
  
"Okay," she said. "'The mermaid king took the boy back to land, with  
a warning that if he didn't return he would never see his beloved  
snake friend again. He would be unable to pee. The boy's bladder  
would just fill and fill until the boy exploded and died.'"  
  
Ranma winced. That evil mermaid king!  
  
"'The boy swore that he would return before it was too late, and set  
off to find the evil diver. He knew it would be a long, dangerous  
trip, but the alternative was too horrible to bear. The boy would  
succeed!'"  
  
Ranma listened intently. This was much better than the stories his  
father told about growing up to run a boring dojo! 


	7. part 8

After a couple of hours Chloe didn't want to read anymore, her throat  
beginning to hurt from the constant talking. In exchange for the  
remaining grapes Ranma went and told Artena that Chloe was ready to  
come in, then wandered back out to the grape fields, picking the bunch  
clean as he went. There was just enough left to make sure he wouldn't  
be hungry for a while, yet still not leave him wobbling about like a  
drunkard filled to the brink. Not that that was a bad way to walk, it  
was fun to copy his pop like that sometimes.  
  
But he couldn't go running around easily on a full stomach.  
  
He entered the field, tossing the desecrated bunch away, and pulled  
out one of his knives. Only one, because trying to throw two at once  
while running seemed to throw him off-balance, which just made his aim  
even worse. He'd never catch anything that way. Besides, his other  
hand and arm were still injured.  
  
Ranma began walking down the rows as quietly as he could, thinking  
sneaky thoughts just like his father had taught him to do.  
  
  
The point of the knife stuck through the tip of the rabbit's ear. The  
animal took off with even more effort, the knife bounced free before  
he could throw another, and then it was gone, cutting through the  
field.  
  
Ranma stopped, short on breath, right in front of the knife. There  
was a bit of blood on the blade, just a smearing of red, and a few  
drops lead away, after the rabbit. He grinned, picked the weapon up,  
and squeezed his way between the plants. The trail wasn't that easy  
to find, but the red stood out barely enough on the dark and ripped  
ground that he could follow it anyway.  
  
Within just a few minutes it was impossible to continue the pursuit.  
The blood was changing color with its contact to the air, darkening to  
an almost brown that was imperceptibly different from the earth it  
faded into.  
  
He'd still hit the thing, though. He might not have killed the  
rabbit, but he'd hit it for the first time. Next time he might be  
eating it for dinner.  
  
Ranma started walking again, aimlessly, thinking sneaky but triumphant  
thoughts as he searched for his prey.  
  
He never found it, though.  
  
  
The next two days were very much the same. Ranma woke up, chased  
around furred evil, then gorged himself on grapes and listened to  
Chloe tell about the boy who was now being chased by a band of  
harpies. The harpies were after the boy because he got something  
called herpies from a girl named Monahr, Ranma wasn't sure how that  
worked or what herpies really was, but the harpies seemed to think it  
was a good thing, for some reason. Some of the story was confusing.  
It was fun, though.  
  
The first day Chloe limped back into the Manor on her own, still being  
careful of her knee but it seemed more that she was being careful with  
it than that she was really in pain. So Ranma figured she'd be able  
to play again soon. His hand and arm were both almost completely  
healed by that point.  
  
The second day was a bit tense. Chloe came out walking almost  
normally so Ranma sat down and listened to her read for a while. She  
did, just as she had the previous few days. But he was waiting for  
her to attack him, her leg healed enough by this time for them to have  
some fun. But she never did. Chloe just read to him for a couple of  
hours and then went inside. It was disappointing, but maybe she  
wasn't really ready for that yet.  
  
Ranma managed to sneak up on a rabbit that afternoon, but as soon as  
he went to go after him with a knife, it bolted. Since he'd been  
moving slowly, concentrating on stealth instead of outright attack, he  
didn't adjust in time and it got away. But he was closer.  
  
Chloe was wearing shorts the next day that cut off just above her  
knees. They were just another pair of the pants she wore, with the  
legs shortened, really. But Ranma could see nothing wrong with her  
knee, no swelling or discoloration. Well, it wasn't strong and manly  
looking like his were, but they looked fine for her, for a girl's  
knees.  
  
Despite that and the way Chloe didn't seem to have any trouble walking  
when she came out, she still never attacked him. She didn't even wear  
her harnesses, going weaponless as far as he could tell. She wasn't  
good enough to fight him without her knives.  
  
Ranma still waited until she had sat down before doing the same, just  
in case. Chloe started reading.  
  
"'The terrible diver turned out to not be that bad after all. He told  
the boy that he hadn't really stolen the pearl, he was just returning  
it to his wife, who had accidentally dropped it into the sea when they  
went on their honeymoon. The giant pearl was the centerpiece of a  
necklace the diver had given his wife as a present.  
  
"'So the boy was stuck. Was it right to take the pearl away from the  
diver's wife if it really belonged to her? On the other hand his  
bladder was getting really full and if the boy didn't take the pearl  
back to the merman king and have his beloved snake friend returned  
soon, he might explode and die.'"  
  
"Wait," interrupted Ranma, "why doesn't the boy just beat the merman  
king up and take his beloved snake friend back that way? Then he  
wouldn't have to take the pearl."  
  
"Because the only place he could fight the merman king is underwater,  
and the merman king is the one who cast the spell that makes it  
possible for humans to breathe underwater. If the boy beat the merman  
king up, the king would break the spell and the boy would drown."  
Chloe looked annoyed. "I told you that already."  
  
"But it's not fair!"  
  
"Life isn't fair. Why would a story be?"  
  
"It should be!" Ranma insisted.  
  
Chloe stared at him. "You know what would be fair? It'd be fair if  
I'd never had to meet you."  
  
Grin. "You trying to start something?"  
  
Chloe stood, and he jumped to his feet, ready for the fight he'd been  
waiting on. She didn't move.  
  
"It would be fair," she said, "if you'd just wandered off in your  
crazy cat mode and gotten hit by a car. It would be fair if you died  
and your body turned into the worm food that your brain already is.  
IT WOULD BE FAIR IF YOU'D NEVER BEEN BORN!" she yelled at him  
furiously.  
  
Ranma frowned. "Hey, you don't have to--"  
  
"You don't get it, do you? I hate you! I wish you would die!  
Nothing could make me happier! Japan is east, okay? Go home, go to  
hell, wherever, just leave me alone!"  
  
  
Chloe collapsed onto her bed, rocking back and forth as she sobbed  
into her pillow. It wasn't fair! Her time at the Manor was supposed  
to be fun and spent with Artena and that girl, not taken up by some  
stupid jerk! And he wouldn't leave her alone, he kept pestering and  
pestering and trying to pick a fight like it was supposed to be a  
game!  
  
"Chloe."  
  
She looked up. "Artena-sama? I--"  
  
"I heard what you said, Chloe." The woman stood in the doorway. "Is  
he really that bad?"  
  
Chloe nodded, mute, looking down miserably. She held her breath to  
keep from crying, clenched her eyes shut. It wasn't fair!  
  
"I've tried to get him to relax around me, tried to get him to fall  
asleep while I was talking, but he just won't! He just gets more and  
more wound up and now there's just a few days left until that girl  
gets here! And since I told him which way Japan is, now it's going to  
be even harder to kill him in time!"  
  
Footsteps, then a weight settled down next to her on the bed.  
"Artena-sama?"  
  
"Shh."  
  
Chloe let herself be pulled into Artena's lap, wrapped her arms around  
the woman.  
  
"Don't worry about Ranma, Chloe. He's not going anywhere."  
  
Artena killed him, and now Chloe was useless, not Noir as she was born  
to be, blessed to be, raised to be.  
  
"I don't think Ranma believed what you said. He's sitting outside  
waiting for you to come back out. He has no idea why you're mad at  
him."  
  
Chloe looked up and Artena smiled at her. "Really?" Chloe asked.  
  
"Yes, really."  
  
"It doesn't matter anyway," Chloe said quietly. "It wasn't working.  
Instead of getting bored and falling asleep, he keeps getting more  
tense and waiting for me to attack him again."  
  
Artena just shushed her again and began rocking back and forth  
slightly on the bed, Chloe in her arms. "Don't worry about Ranma. He  
doesn't matter. If you don't kill him before that girl gets here,  
nothing bad will happen."  
  
Chloe held on tighter. "Thank you, Artena-sama."  
  
  
Ranma stared at the Manor entrance, waiting. Where was she? Chloe  
went running inside an hour earlier after acting like she hated him,  
for no reason. What was that about, anyway?  
  
He picked up Chloe's book, which had been left behind, and opened it  
to a random page. It was filled with gibberish, whatever nonsense  
words and letters these French people seemed to use. What was it  
really about? Chloe was making it up as she went along, he knew--the  
number of words she read per page was widely inconsistent, and the  
story had nothing to do with a looking glass, as she'd said the book  
was called after.  
  
Chloe didn't make sense. She was a girl after all. More fun than  
most, but still just a girl who would run off crying for no reason at  
all.  
  
Ranma took the book up to the Manor entrance and left it on the floor  
just inside the doorway. He'd go hunt rabbits, instead.  
  
He walked towards the grape fields, slowly. Was east the way to go,  
or had Chloe been lying just to get rid of him? South couldn't be it-  
-there was nothing but more mountains in that direction. Same with  
north.  
  
Why would Chloe hate him? It's not like he'd done anything mean to  
her. She kept starting fights, and he kept winning them. Why would  
she get mad about that? Ukyou had gone and given him free food  
whenever they finished fighting. Was the difference because Chloe was  
a girl? Or was she just weird?  
  
His dad had said stuff about girls being overemotional, and moody.  
Was that what was wrong with Chloe, she was just in a bad mood? She'd  
been crying when she ran off and he knew he hadn't done anything to  
her. So maybe she hadn't really meant it, maybe she'd just had PMS or  
whatever it was Pop had talked about. How long did that last?  
Probably not more than a few hours, whenever he got mad it only took  
that long for him to settle down.  
  
So, he'd check back after lunch to see if she was fixed yet.  
  
  
He wandered the fields, looking everywhere. The rabbits were hiding  
better than they usually did and his whole sneaky thoughts, quiet  
thoughts thing kept getting off track. Was it noon yet? A look at  
the sky showed the sun as being just off center, so not quite.  
  
Ranma continued his hunt. Grapes were particularly nauseous when they  
were heated, as the things certainly were now. Little bubbles of hot  
and sweet water that left him feeling thirsty on an already  
uncomfortably warm day. Wasn't it supposed to be getting chilly?  
  
Chloe might be sitting under the tree again, waiting for him with  
another half of a sandwich, eying the thing and thinking about how  
she'd much rather eat it than a bunch of boiling grapes. All happy  
and in a good mood and sorry for getting mad at him earlier because  
she was fixed now. Or she could still be inside crying. Which was  
it?  
  
He sat down and started to eat.  
  
  
She wasn't under the tree, or even outside as far as he could tell.  
Maybe she was still messed up. Maybe she didn't want to have to tell  
him she was sorry for what she'd said.  
  
Ranma turned around and headed back out to hunt for supper. He'd  
catch a rabbit! He would!  
  
  
The one with the scabbed ear he named Bugs. He'd seen those American  
cartoons, and he knew it was the only name that fit. Bugs was  
everywhere. Ranma would be at one edge of the grape fields, see Bugs,  
chase him around for a little bit, and then the rabbit would disappear  
down some invisible rabbit hole. Then the thing would pop back up  
when he was way over on the other side of the fields, searching again  
for his food, and the same thing would happen. It was like some  
magician's trick of making a rabbit appear out of nowhere and then  
sending it back to that same place again later.  
  
Ranma was pretty sure that Bugs was the Satan those religious people  
had been talking about when his pop dragged him to church on occasion.  
The bunny was that evil. It even seemed to be waving its injured ear  
at him whenever it was about to pull one of its vanishing acts,  
taunting him. Seeya later, it seemed to say. It's been fun.  
  
If not for the scabbed ear showing differently Ranma would suspect  
that Bugs was the only bunny around. Any others that were present  
either didn't want to mess with him or were just a whole lot better at  
hiding. So he only saw a rabbit other than Bugs once in a while. He  
was pretty sure there were more rabbits, hidden, that were just  
laughing as Bugs played around with him.  
  
Looking over at the Manor yielded nothing. Chloe wasn't there, wasn't  
outside at the tree waiting for him to show up. The only thing he had  
to play with was Bugs. He hated Bugs. Bugs laughed at him but kept  
running away.  
  
Bugs was gonna die.  
  
  
Sneaky thoughts, quiet thoughts. Step. Sneaky thoughts, quiet  
thoughts. Step. Repeat.  
  
It was late afternoon, almost time to eat. He wasn't going to eat  
grapes for dinner, not again, so he was gonna kill Bugs and eat him,  
instead. Ranma was sure that the next level up in fare from eating  
grapes was eating a grape-eating little monster. And Bugs had it  
coming.  
  
Step, step, step. The grapes were motionless, the air still and heavy  
and pressing down on him. Every nerve tingled with anticipation, on  
the edge of explosion, looking for that telltale flicker of movement.  
Looking for the target to make itself known. His own presence was  
masked, Ranma was sure of it. Sneaky thoughts, quiet thoughts.  
  
Step, step, step. The world moved forward one step at a time,  
centered around him. It moved because he willed it to do so. And  
Bugs raised his head because Ranma wanted that, too.  
  
They stood, staring at each other. Bugs looked more serious than  
usual, his scabbed ear hanging limp. Ranma was going to kill him, the  
rabbit would die, he was sure of it. Did Bugs know?  
  
A knife thunked into the wooden post next to Bugs, and Bugs took off.  
Ranma followed. Each hand held another knife. Bugs hopped left,  
hopped right, a knife brushed through the fringes of its fur, missing  
otherwise. Ranma pulled another knife out of his pocket as he ran,  
his other hand preparing to throw again.  
  
If Bugs was resigned to his death, knew it was coming, he didn't let  
it show. The rabbit bound forward quickly and Ranma could barely keep  
up, fast though he was. Bugs bounced from side to side but stayed in  
the row, and they crossed the length of the field as they chased what  
they wanted.  
  
The field ended and they ran through the open area beyond. Bugs  
should have turned but went straight instead and now had nowhere to  
hide. If Ranma could throw well enough, Bugs would die.  
  
A knife hit the earth a foot away from Bugs, dodged. With the follow-  
up Ranma guessed better and it shot by Bugs' head, barely missing. He  
was careful not to step on the weapons as he ran forward.  
  
Bugs' took off to the right and a knife stabbed into his side, the  
blade digging into the ribs and catching. Bugs tumbled over the  
impediment, rolled to a stop.  
  
Ranma halted just before the wounded animal. The side of Bugs' head  
was toward Ranma and one of the rabbit's eyes stared at him. Bugs was  
trying to move forward but the knife blocked the swing of its legs.  
Blood seeped out around the blade, down to the grip. Bugs stared at  
him.  
  
Ranma watched as his furred enemy poured out crimson life until the  
cup was empty. Bugs never stopped staring, not even after the  
movement of its chest stopped. Ranma had won his supper.  
  
  
Ranma sat cross-legged in front of the corpse, a knife in one of his  
hands. It wasn't the one that had killed Bugs, that knife was still  
stuck into the rabbit. The blood was dried. Ranma had poked Bugs a  
few times and the bunny was stiffening. He needed to cook his supper.  
  
There was no fire. He had wood, if he looked for loose or unused  
boards from the grape fields, but no matches or lighter. The burnable  
material he had available wasn't going to just burst into flames  
without help. His pop would have found a way and Bugs would already  
be cooking, if he were here.  
  
Rabbit fur wasn't something he was willing to eat. His father had  
caught rabbits and birds and such before and they had eaten the meat  
product left over after Genma's butchering, but Ranma had never  
watched the act itself. Little bits of entrails or organs or pieces  
of red slimy stuff that looked like it could have come out of him was  
always involved. So he just waited until it was time for dinner,  
doing kata, preparing the rest of the meal, doing whatever involved  
not watching a little animal be torn to pieces or plucked of feathers  
or whatever it was his father would always do to the things.  
  
Bugs stared at him.  
  
Ranma set about removing the skin.  
  
  
The grapes tasted raw and fleshy and sweet like blood. Ranma wondered  
how he had ever been able to eat the things. He couldn't, now, only a  
few going past his lips before they tried to come up again. No more.  
He'd starve himself first.  
  
He now had two less knives. The one that had killed Bugs was next to  
the desecrated corpse. The other one, which he'd used to rip the body  
apart as he tried to separate fur from everything else, clumps of the  
stuff sticking to his bloody hands and getting on his clothes, he had  
thrown that knife away. Hopefully he wouldn't wander across it and  
step on the thing, the rabbit fur and blood tarnishing the blade and  
infecting when it sliced into his unshod foot. But he didn't want to  
carry it around in his pocket, either, and take it to the springs for  
cleaning.  
  
He'd gotten most of the blood off his hands, onto his clothes, which  
were really Chloe's. The rest of his knives, which were really  
Chloe's, were still in his pockets, eight of the things remaining  
since he had taken the time to search for the ones he'd thrown at  
Bugs. The ones that had missed. There was still some dried redness  
covering his palms, though, which he hadn't been able to remove.  
Maybe that had gotten onto the grapes, maybe that was why they tasted  
like mutilated rabbit. He should probably wash his hands.  
  
Ranma looked to see if Chloe's colorful splash of hair was by the  
tree, in front of the Manor. It wasn't. He could have traded her a  
bunch for half a sandwich, or a quarter. He was hungry, just not  
enough to eat grapes. He probably would have left after the exchange,  
to get around watching Chloe eat the things, seeing them chewed and  
the seeds spat out with bits of corpse clinging stickily like bits of  
Bugs' entrails.  
  
But Chloe wasn't outside reading or munching on some Artena-made food,  
instead she was still inside, crying and hating him and wishing he  
would die. How long did that hormone stuff last?  
  
He set off towards the springs, wanting to wash the blood off of his  
hands.  
  
  
Ranma opened his eyes and it was early morning. He'd fallen asleep  
after scrubbing himself clean in the hot water. How had he managed to  
not wake up while his stomach spent hours eating away at his spine?  
He yawned, stretched, and the emptiness within ripped him in two. It  
wasn't getting any grapes. They'd probably cause him to erupt like an  
acid volcano if he tried some anyway, the disgusting things.  
  
Maybe he should try sneaking some food out of Artena's kitchen.  
  
  
Chloe slipped another knife into the last harness. She'd already  
filled the other ones. Two more and she was loaded down completely.  
Eight on each leg, five on each arm. A few went into her pockets for  
good measure.  
  
That girl would be arriving tomorrow. Artena said it didn't matter if  
she killed Ranma before then, but it did to Chloe. She wanted to kill  
the boy herself. She would kill the boy herself, to prove that she  
was Noir, as she should be. She would be more than a second choice.  
She would be deserving of being that girl's partner.  
  
And so Ranma would die.  
  
  
There was nobody in front of the Manor, again. Was Chloe still  
crying? Artena served breakfast over an hour earlier, so Chloe should  
have come outside by now, if she was going to. Was she in her room or  
somewhere else? Where was Artena? The woman's writing area wasn't  
between the front doorway and the kitchen, so if they were in those  
rooms he could sneak in and out and not run into either of them.  
  
Ranma circled around to one side of the Manor, walking through the  
grape fields from a distance. Chloe's room was on this end of the  
building but her window was small and set too high for the girl to see  
through. Artena did her letters on the opposite side in a room with a  
window that gave a good view of everything in that direction. So he'd  
approach from the blind side and hope neither happened to be looking  
out the wrong window from a room he hoped they wouldn't be in.  
  
He stepped away from the fields, crossing the distance to the Manor.  
Sneaky thoughts, quiet thoughts, but moving quickly. Sneaky thoughts,  
quiet thoughts. Musn't get caught.  
  
He reached the edge of the building, stopped, listened. Nothing. He  
listened some more. Sneaky thoughts, quiet thoughts, thoughts of big  
floppy elephant ears that caught everything. Still nothing.  
  
Ranma worked his way around to the front of the building, ducking  
under the couple of windows that he came to. He peeked around the  
corner, listened again. Chloe or Artena could come marching out the  
doorway right after he stepped out of cover. He'd be seen instantly  
if they just happened to look right. But he heard nothing.  
  
The corner was huge and felt like the edge of one of those western  
style beds when waking up from a nightmare, in the dark, knowing there  
was something underneath and that if he bent down to look it would rip  
his head off, or if he stepped out of the bed it would eat his feet,  
then he wouldn't be able to run and he'd just be stuck there waiting  
while it finished the appetizer. He hated western beds. Futons hid  
nothing.  
  
The corner didn't, either, and nothing happened when he stepped  
around. He ducked under the front windows, peeking through as he went  
to see if anybody was inside watching him, waiting for him. Nobody  
was, that he could see. The front door loomed large and open and had  
a maw like a snake's, ready to swallow him whole. Artena was probably  
just inside, waiting patiently for him to make the turn, forbidding  
entry with her passive aggression, Chloe a step behind. Would she be  
crying, hateful, knives out and ready to attack? Probably the last.  
Probably. Sneaky thoughts, quiet thoughts.  
  
The doorframe was the edge of the unknown. Everything lurked beyond.  
Adrenaline fed him like the grapes he'd gorged on days before. No  
aftertaste. Standing here on the brink wasn't good. If he turned and  
looked and somebody was waiting for him, Chloe could attack with her  
knives, stick him in the arm again before he could react. So he had  
to do it quickly.  
  
He jumped across to the other side, looking through the doorway as he  
moved, ready to take off running. He didn't want to fight right here.  
Nothing. An empty hallway. It was safe.  
  
Ranma started to turn back, to step through the door, then froze.  
What if Chloe or Artena had stepped into the corridor after he'd leapt  
across the entrance? Useless thought. He turned and peeked around  
the corner this time and nobody was still there. He stepped inside,  
his bare feet perfect for moving quietly. The stone floor was cool.  
  
A door on the right, not where he wanted to go. Somebody could be  
beyond, though. He took a quick look, nothing. Sneaky thoughts,  
quiet thoughts, listening like a bat. Echoes of silence bounced from  
everywhere, reflected endlessly by the walls. His heart thumped out a  
rapid punctuation of each imaginary approaching footstep. He knew he  
was grinning and that he shouldn't be but couldn't help it. Sneaky  
thoughts, quiet thoughts.  
  
First door on the left. Dining room, then kitchen. There was no  
reason for anybody to be within so he stepped into the room without  
looking. He needed to get out of the hallway, which was too open,  
doors on both sides leading to far too many rooms. The dining room  
was empty and so was the kitchen. Empty of people.  
  
He checked the cupboards quickly, opening the doors and closing them  
rapidly as he checked for food. Lots of dishes stacked within, more  
than needed for just Artena and Chloe. Who else ate here?  
  
He found bread. Who brought bread? Artena must have made it,  
otherwise it'd be stale. There hadn't been any people delivering  
food, not that he had seen. Ranma grabbed a couple of short, fat  
loaves, leaving most of ten. Artena said something from another room.  
  
Ranma glimpsed out into the hallway and saw nothing. Artena must be  
in one of the rooms along the side. But she might be about to enter  
the hallway to go to the kitchen for a drink or something, so it was  
time to go.  
  
He ran towards the entrance and then outside, heading for the grape  
fields again. Looking over his shoulder revealed nothing, there was  
not a tall brunette or a shorter girl with reddish hair, watching  
angrily as he made off with stolen food while wearing borrowed clothes  
and carrying confiscated knives. Nobody watched at all.  
  
He slowed down but kept the bread held in front of his body. If  
nobody was looking there was no reason to flee, and if he was seen  
doing that the missing bread might be noticed. He'd want to eat more  
later, after all, so it was best to not give himself away.  
  
His stomach tried to envelop the bread that was being held to it.  
Should he eat the bread in a field of grapes? That seemed wrong,  
somehow, but he was too hungry to walk out to the coliseum, which was  
the next closest shelter. It had been almost a day since he'd eaten,  
and that had just been more of those evil fruits.  
  
He entered the fields, walking just a few rows deep before turning in.  
He sat a short distance from the edge and looked down at the bread.  
It was brown and rough, but heavy in his grasp, each loaf about the  
size of his head. Could he eat it all?  
  
Ranma brought one of the loaves up to his mouth, tore a great big  
chunk off with his teeth. It was dry with a thick crust but very good  
and his mouth did that shrieking suicide thing again that hurt so much  
in reaction. He swallowed and a huge rolled-up towel worked its way  
down his throat, catching in his ribs. Water?  
  
A loud squawk from right behind made Ranma roll to the side ahead of a  
flash of reflected sunlight. 


	8. part 9

Chloe was back. Two knives stuck into the fence post he'd been eating  
in front of. Ranma jumped to his feet to avoid two more, then took  
off running down the row. He couldn't fight with bread in his hands.  
He could hear Chloe a few steps behind in the next aisle.  
  
He turned right when he reached the end of the field, then right again  
to go into the next row. It'd give him a bit of space. Ranma ripped  
another mouthful of bread off and swallowed it awkwardly as he ran,  
then did the same again before the previous bite was finished working  
its way down. Fast thoughts, speedy thoughts.  
  
There was nobody behind him.  
  
Ranma stopped, listened. He couldn't hear any pursuit. Chloe  
wouldn't have given up that quickly. He quit chewing and a massive  
lump of partially masticated bread hit his stomach with an audible  
splash. The waves settled and all was silent. Where was she?  
  
Another bite, this one quiet, chewed carefully and slowly as to not  
make any noise. Splash. Quiet thoughts, sneaky thoughts, elephant  
ears that catch everything thoughts. Still nothing. She was gone.  
  
Ranma started walking again, though quietly. The second heel of the  
first loaf of bread disappeared past his jaws. He was mostly full.  
Too many grapes had made his insides shrink in protest. What a  
surprise. Damn the things.  
  
Chloe was out here somewhere, hunting for him. Archimedes was, too.  
Would the bird tell Chloe where he was? It had startled him earlier  
and that was why Chloe's first two knives had missed. He probably  
would have dodged in time anyway. Probably. Chloe would have made a  
bit of noise to warn of where she was. Wouldn't she have?  
  
He frowned, looked down at the remaining loaf. Too bad there wasn't a  
good place to put it until he was hungry again. Ranma reached the end  
of the row and kept going straight. Chloe had to be behind him  
somewhere so he'd head for the coliseum and ditch the bread somewhere.  
Then they could play, if that was what Chloe wanted to do.  
  
  
Ranma jumped to the top ledge of the coliseum and looked towards the  
Manor. Some hills, grapes in the distance, the building tiny from  
this far away, but there was no Chloe following him. Had she gone  
back inside or was she still looking for him? He couldn't believe  
that she would quit so easily.  
  
He dropped back down to the uppermost row of seats and started the  
descent back to the sands below. Sneaking around was fun but he was  
bored and wanted to fight. He was going to march right up to the  
Manor and wait for Chloe to show up, whether it was from inside or  
from hiding somewhere in the grape fields.  
  
  
Ranma squinted, the sun shining across as he looked south from under  
Chloe's tree. There she was, stepping out into the open, a quarter  
mile away. She wasn't covered in green, though. Where was her cloak?  
  
She walked towards him and he waited for her. When she was fifty feet  
away he stood, ready. She stopped at twenty feet. The same distance  
she practiced throwing her knives from.  
  
Her harnesses were visible since Chloe wasn't wearing her cloak.  
Black things that covered a good portion of each thigh and forearm,  
under which she wore clothes just like the ones he had on. His were  
ripped and bloody, though.  
  
"So you're gonna try to kill me?" he asked.  
  
Chloe smiled slightly. "Yes."  
  
Was that a truthful smile or a lying smile? His own lying smiles were  
big and impossible for him to resist making. Chloe might be better at  
it, though. Or she could be telling the truth. Which was it?  
  
A knife was suddenly in each of the girl's hands. A neat trick and he  
hadn't even noticed. "Are you ready?" she asked.  
  
"Yup."  
  
She nodded, glanced over towards the Manor doorway, then threw both  
knives. He dodged and two more were in the air again, which he also  
dodged. She was fast but not so much that he couldn't make sure she  
missed from twenty feet off. He pulled a blade out of his pocket and  
threw one of Chloe's knives back at her.  
  
She had to step aside, and he grinned. "You don't want to get close,  
do ya?"  
  
Chloe frowned, pulled two more knives, and ran forward. At ten feet  
he threw again. She had to almost jump to the right to avoid getting  
stuck in the chest. His aim was better now? She stopped at that  
distance.  
  
She threw one knife and he started to dodge. She threw the second one  
to where he was moving. Ranma snatched it out of the air and tossed  
it back. He grinned again when she yelped at another close miss.  
  
"That distance isn't good either?"  
  
Chloe stopped, stared at him. "When did you get so good at that?"  
  
"Dunno." Bugs would be proud. Is that what Chloe would look like?  
"Maybe you should give up?"  
  
She pulled two more knives out and again did the staggered release  
trick. He dodged the first, had to duck the second which slipped  
right over his ear, and then the next two were almost planted in his  
gut. He jumped and caught a tree branch, the knives going under his  
feet. This was annoying.  
  
Chloe looked like she thought she'd won and the next two knives came  
at him. The first was torso level and the second by his feet in case  
he let go. Ranma yanked his body up, his feet hitting the branch next  
to his hands, then jumped away from it, towards Chloe, a knife caught  
from each pocket and thrown at her.  
  
She dodged, barely, and threw one back. He twisted and it went by and  
then he landed and she swiped at him with another knife. He caught  
her wrist and she stepped forward to stab him with the other hand, a  
new blade in it now. He turned and grabbed that wrist, too, and her  
heel smashed into his knee.  
  
He pulled away, that leg almost collapsing under him, and he used his  
momentum to yank forward on her arms and head-butt Chloe in the face.  
She cried out in pain and they both fell back, Chloe clutching at her  
forehead and him testing his knee gingerly. It was bad but not enough  
to keep him from fighting for several days, like Chloe's had. He'd  
just have trouble during this one.  
  
Ranma stood with his injured limb away from the girl. She was looking  
at him, the base of one palm above her brow, her lips twisted in a  
slight smile. Yeah, dodging knives with a bad leg was probably gonna  
be really hard.  
  
Chloe reached for her harnesses arm and Ranma pulled a knife out of  
each pocket, throwing before Chloe could. The first knife missed but  
the second shoved into the back of her left hand. She yelled out  
again and Ranma could see the tip poking through her palm. A knife  
flew at his face from her other hand and he barely managed to slap it  
away.  
  
When he looked back at Chloe he saw her grasp the handle of the knife  
stuck though her and pull it free. Her face was white, the blade and  
her hands covered with red. He ran at her as best he could but she  
recovered and threw the knife at him. Twisting to the side made it  
slice across his chest. He kicked Chloe in the stomach and she  
stumbled back, knocked off her feet by the blow.  
  
He dropped back to his feet, wincing at the pain. Chloe's chest  
spasmed as she tried to suck in air but couldn't. She stood anyway  
and her face was wet and she glared at him. Dirt clung to her bloody  
hand from where she pushed herself up, a print upon the ground. She  
shouldn't be using that hand at all. Even he knew that. A line  
burned across his chest. He was hurt, too, his tattered shirt dyed  
red in front.  
  
"Hey, quit it," Ranma said. "You gotta go have Artena fix you up."  
  
Teary red eyes glanced passed him, over at the Manor again. Was she  
there? Ranma wasn't going to try looking.  
  
"No," Chloe said.  
  
She had to have forced that out, she still couldn't breathe. He  
couldn't just split, not fast enough with his messed up knee. He had  
to make Chloe stop attacking him. Blood was almost pouring off her  
fingers.  
  
Another knife was pulled from harness by Chloe's uninjured hand. She  
still wasn't breathing right and she was going to attack?  
  
Ranma rushed forward. Chloe didn't throw and he had to stop quickly  
to avoid her taking a slash at him. It was slow and clumsy, though,  
and Chloe was still trying to get more oxygen into her lungs. When  
she swung the knife back at him he stepped in and punched her in the  
gut. Any air she'd gained was ejected and he tried to grab the  
weapon. She struggled and he knocked her down again, the knife in one  
of his hands now.  
  
Chloe stayed on the ground, arms clutched to her chest as she fought  
to take a breath. Red soaked into her previously clean shirt; eyes  
clenched shut but still leaking. Was it from the pain or something  
else?  
  
Ranma looked to the Manor and Artena was in the doorway, watching  
calmly. Didn't she care? Chloe was bleeding pretty badly.  
  
Ranma stared down at the girl. She was crying breathlessly, dirty,  
and wounded. His pop probably woulda beat the shit out of any kid  
that hurt him that badly. Artena just stood there and watched. What  
would happen when he left? Would Artena help Chloe out, or not?  
  
A click sounded. He raised his head in time to see a Japanese girl  
the same age as he and Chloe, then something smashed into his good leg  
and she had a gun and Ranma fell but not before the next bullet hit  
high on his right arm and then he landed on it and it hurt then  
another shot blasted his ringing ears and he was punched by another  
fist of lead again this time in the chest.  
  
The girl walked to him and he knew that even if Chloe didn't hate him,  
he wasn't sure if she really meant it or not, he knew that this girl  
did hate him and wanted him to die more than anything. Her face was  
framed by hair the same color as his but her eyes were dark and mean  
and her face told him that he was going to die. He couldn't move, he  
couldn't stand or attack or even try to run away. He could barely  
even turn his head to look up as she pointed the gun at his face. His  
blood washed stickily over his body as it escaped in a steady stream.  
He was going to die.  
  
He saw the girl's finger tense to fire. He was going to die.  
  
"You're early," came Artena's voice.  
  
The girl paused, looked away from him but kept the gun pointed at his  
head. "Yes," she said.  
  
He heard something else but a black hole swallowed the sun and muffled  
his ears and he could no longer see or listen or feel anything.  
  
  
Chloe hadn't come by to visit. Neither had that other girl, the one  
who'd shot him three times and almost caused him to die. He knew he'd  
almost died because Artena had told him so. She also told him that  
Chloe had wanted him to die and that the other girl had also. He'd  
known that.  
  
Ranma was stuck in bed and had been for the past few days, ever since  
he woke up. The bullet to his leg had broken the bone. His opposite  
knee hadn't healed as quickly as he'd thought it would, probably  
because he got shot a bunch of times, so that still uncomfortable as  
well. Which meant that he couldn't walk at all. His right arm was in  
a sling to keep him from moving it. He didn't have a reason to move  
since he didn't have a place to go anyway. There was a big bandage  
over his chest and it hurt to breathe or move or even stay still like  
he was. He didn't know how Artena had gotten that third bullet out  
and hadn't asked. He was alive.  
  
Artena fed him three times a day. There had been no talk of doing  
dishes; she'd just fed him pleasantly. When he had to go to the  
bathroom she helped him with that, too. It was difficult and  
embarrassing but she remained pleasant no matter how much he wished  
that girl had shot Artena instead. She came to his room to feed him  
and check his bandages occasionally but other than that he stayed  
alone.  
  
He knew now that Chloe really did hate him. He could hear her voice  
as she walked by his room on occasion, shy and happy as she talked to  
the silent girl who'd shot him three times. Chloe didn't sound weepy  
and hateful like when she'd been talking to him. He was sure the hand  
he'd stabbed was still useless and bandaged up and that she probably  
needed help eating too, but she was still happy and friendly and eager  
to please the girl who'd shot him three times.  
  
Archimedes had come by, though. The bird flew in through the open  
doorway and settled down out of his reach on one of the corner posts  
at the bottom of the bed. Archimedes just stared at him from there,  
motionless until he tried to shift slightly, to make it's support  
shake and the damn bird to leave. When it did its laughter was  
mocking, harsh. Archimedes probably hated him, too. Why had she kept  
Chloe from putting a knife in his back?  
  
Footsteps clicked down the hallway and he heard Artena enter the room.  
Ranma looked to the side, the door being in the wall behind him, and  
saw her standing there with something cut out of a newspaper. It was  
a Japanese newspaper because he could read the ad on the back of what  
she held. Something for toothpaste. Artena wasn't here to check his  
bandages.  
  
"I found your father." Pleasant as ever. Pop was in the news?  
  
Artena stepped over to the bed and held out the clipping and he took  
it with his uninjured left hand. "You can stay here as long as you  
want," she said, then left the room.  
  
On the other side of the toothpaste ad it said that a man named Genma  
Saotome was found present at the scene of a massacre. After  
attempting to flee the suspect had been shot to death to prevent his  
escape. The man had a number of small wounds covering his body, his  
clothes were torn, and he had a knife fitting those that were used on  
the victims in his hand when he was spotted. The police judged him  
the killer and considered the case closed. The motive was guessed to  
be an intent to steal from the victims. His father had a history of  
theft.  
  
  
Ranma hopped into the dining room. It'd been a week and the damaged  
knee was fine now. His other leg was healed well enough that he could  
at least hold it up slightly for getting around. His chest only hurt  
when he breathed too much, an ache that spread all throughout his  
torso. It hurt whenever he bumped into anything, too, and it was hard  
not to do that while hopping around with only one useful arm.  
  
The others were waiting, Artena patiently, Chloe watching the girl  
that'd shot him three times, and the girl that'd shot him three times  
just staring ahead in that odd hateful way of hers. He stopped next  
to his chair and Artena scooted it back for him, holding it still  
while he seated himself. When he was ready she pushed it forward  
again so he was up against the table. She sat down.  
  
Artena had already cut up his and Chloe's food so everybody began to  
eat. The other girl picked at hers. She never ate much, her plate  
still having food on it when everybody finished. He hadn't tried to  
take any of her leftovers, both because it'd be hard to do with a  
busted arm and because he knew she'd shoot him if he did. Artena had  
told the girl not to kill him, but she would anyway.  
  
The girl didn't have a name. Chloe never called her anything, nor did  
Artena. It wasn't a big deal, it was easy for them to look at the  
girl whenever they said something to her and everybody would know whom  
they were talking to. A name wasn't really necessary. But it made  
the girl even weirder, made her seem even more malicious. She was a  
nameless girl with a gun who wanted to kill him for no reason. Chloe,  
at least, hated him in particular, and had reasons for wanting to stab  
him to death with her knives.  
  
The person who'd killed those men in the paper had used knives. His  
father had picked one of them up. Had it belonged to Chloe?  
  
Even wounded he still finished eating first. Chloe ate awkwardly with  
her right hand, just like he did his left, and the other two went  
slowly, or hardly at all in the girl's case. Chloe rested her  
bandaged hand on the edge of the table and he wondered if it still  
looked like Bugs had after Ranma had ripped him open, red and gory and  
sickening with a bit of white barely glimpsed through the bloody  
flesh.  
  
She ignored him, just as she'd done ever since he had woken up after  
being shot three times.  
  
The others finished, Artena pulled his chair back for him, and he  
hopped back to his room.  
  
  
Ranma stared at the stone ceiling. Sleeping was something he had  
always liked to do. Usually when he and his pop were on the road  
between sessions at school they would spend their time training all  
day and stop only for meals. He would collapse after their evening  
sparring session, a full stomach and an exhausted body knocking him  
out until it was time to start again the next morning. He got almost  
ten hours of sleep and it was something he missed when going to school  
and having to train later at night to make up for the missed practice.  
  
Now, though, that wasn't going to happen anymore. Not if his father  
was dead. He was sleeping all day because he didn't have anything  
better to do. He couldn't even run through boring kata, not with him  
being shot up like he was.  
  
Ranma stared at the ceiling. He was trying to sleep, anyway. Sleepy  
thoughts, drowsy thoughts, thoughts of the Sandman coming to make him  
slumber for a few years. But he didn't come and Ranma couldn't sleep.  
All Ranma could do was lie in bed and wish for something to do that  
didn't require any kind of movement.  
  
  
Artena held out a book and he took it with his left hand. She turned  
to leave, but spoke from the doorway, "You need to know that in a week  
because afterwards we'll stop talking Japanese." She stepped out of  
the room.  
  
Learning French? Dammit, he'd asked for something to read, not a  
paper brick. And it was shaped just like a brick, too, tall and  
narrow and thick enough that he could barely hold it with one hand.  
He opened the book and looked through the first few pages. Copyright  
1964? It was as old as Artena!  
  
Ranma flipped to the first chapter.  
  
  
He concentrated. He had to get this right, otherwise it'd probably  
sound really stupid. "Please pass the butter," he said in French,  
carefully.  
  
Chloe stopped with her fork halfway to her mouth, looked at him. The  
other girl didn't react at all. Artena was at the opposite end of the  
table and too far away to reach him, but the butter was right between  
her and Chloe.  
  
Artena picked the butter up and held it out to Chloe, expectation  
clear. The girl frowned slightly but put her fork down, took the  
butter with her right hand, and gave it to Ranma. He grinned, put the  
stuff next to his plate, and went back to eating. Chloe glared at him  
and then picked her own fork back up, almost stabbing at her food in  
annoyance. Had she thought he could have put it on something using  
only one hand?  
  
  
Common phrases. Which way to the capital? Why would anybody ask  
that? He flipped to the next page. Where is the restroom? He  
memorized that one. Does your poodle have rabies? What? Next page.  
  
  
Brick. Window. Brick. Bed. Brick. Cupboard. Brick. Sheet.  
Brick. Pillow. Brick. Brick. Brick. Too many bricks. He knew  
that word already.  
  
Ranma pulled himself off the bed. His arm seemed fine and it didn't  
hurt to put weight on his leg anymore. He knew it was still fragile,  
though. His chest ache seemed to have gone away as well. Two weeks.  
It'd taken long enough. He probably still wasn't ready to do much,  
but walking around outside should be fine.  
  
He picked up the book and left his room.  
  
  
Chloe's tree was abandoned. He wasn't really surprised. Her hand had  
healed faster than his bullet wounds so Chloe and that girl had been  
sparring. Chloe came to dinner every night with bruises on her face  
and exposed skin, looking cheerful as the other girl just ate  
sullenly, unmarked. He didn't understand girls at all. Chloe just  
got upset when he'd beaten her. But she hated him, so maybe that was  
different.  
  
Ranma sat under the tree and flipped through the book on French. He'd  
also gotten a dictionary from Artena before heading out, since the one  
in the book wasn't very complete. Tree. Sky. Building. Manor.  
Hills. Mountains. Clouds. Leaves. Grapes. Wood. Lots more stuff  
to learn when he left his room.  
  
Off in the distance, coliseum.  
  
  
They didn't look or even seem to notice when he entered the sand-  
filled arena. He went over to the stone benches to watch. His leg  
hurt a bit from walking so far, but he ignored it.  
  
The two girls were fighting with staffs. The wooden poles were taller  
than they were and as big around as their wrists, but they still swung  
the things about and smacked at each other almost as quickly as he  
could have. It was clear that Chloe was losing, the other girl's  
staff impacting on Chloe's side or arms or legs almost regularly.  
Chloe could barely keep up a partial defense and never managed to land  
a hit in return.  
  
Though she kept going, Chloe had to be hurting pretty badly. His pop  
had trained him with staffs and Ranma was pretty sure that the girl  
was hitting Chloe harder than his father had him, even though the  
training was supposed to be something to help toughen him up against  
repeated damage. Chloe just kept up that happy smile that faltered  
only slightly at particularly vicious blows.  
  
The crazy chick looked at Chloe the same way she'd looked at Ranma, as  
a bug to be crushed. The same way she'd looked at him before shooting  
him three times. She was working Chloe over methodically, though,  
putting a careful amount of weight behind each swing. Bones that  
could have been broken weren't, but they probably came close.  
  
Suddenly the girl quit playing nice. Chloe was pushed back as blow  
after heavy blow beat upon her staff. Chloe held her stick up in  
defense and the other girl brought hers down again and again to hit  
it. The other girl was going so fast that Chloe couldn't do anything  
but try to keep from getting hit by something that would crack her  
skull.  
  
The girl knocked Chloe on her back with another blow. Chloe's staff  
fell to the side. She looked scared. They were friends? The other  
girl brought her stick up again for another swing. Ranma tensed.  
  
She stopped and turned towards him. He stayed still. Fifteen feet  
separated them. Did she have a gun? The staff would be enough. No  
way could he beat her right now.  
  
She looked back down at Chloe, then headed for the exit. Practice was  
over. He watched her go.  
  
Chloe stayed on the ground, on the sand. He could see she was  
breathing quickly, and a bit shaky. It was probably because of the  
workout. Eventually she sat up, then stood.  
  
She glared at him like the other girl had, her stick back in hand.  
Chloe wouldn't attack him, though. Not like the other girl would.  
She said something in French that he didn't know, then went after her  
friend. Her bruises weren't quite as cheerful now. She hurried  
painfully.  
  
Ranma stared. What was that about?  
  
He sighed, opened his book. Benches. Stadium. Arena. Sand. Ranma  
checked to see what she'd said, then frowned. He was not!  
  
  
Ranma limped back into the Manor, hungry, his leg hurting. He  
shouldn't have walked that much yet. He'd wait a few days before  
trying it again. He would probably be back to normal in another week,  
broken bones and all. Then he could do kata again.  
  
Dinner was quiet as normal, the crazy chick not saying anything,  
Artena eating silently. She'd stopped cutting his and Chloe's food  
up. Chloe seemed a bit sorer than usual, and a bit angrier with him,  
for whatever reason. He ate quickly, his speed no longer handicapped  
by using only one hand. As soon as he finished he pushed his chair  
back to leave.  
  
"It's your turn to help me with the dishes, Ranma." Artena spoke in  
Japanese for clarity. Chloe cheered up visibly.  
  
"Uh, my leg hurts. I should go lie down." It did hurt. He wasn't  
lying, really.  
  
"Chloe is bruised all over."  
  
Ranma looked at the other girl. She stared back. She had a butter  
knife in one hand.  
  
"She helped yesterday," Artena said, then repeated, "it's your turn."  
  
He sat down and waited while the others finished their meals. The  
girl put the knife down and resumed picking at her plate. At least  
this way he could finish what the crazy chick didn't eat.  
  
  
Ranma lied in bed, 'Through The Looking Glass' on his lap, the  
'Learning French' book on one side and the Japanese to French  
dictionary on the other. Chloe had quit reading when that girl  
arrived, so it gave him something else to do. His leg hurt too much  
and his chest did, too, so he couldn't do anything fun, anyway. Plus  
he needed to learn this.  
  
He really hated Alice, though.  
  
  
Ranma jumped, dodged in midair, and threw his leg out at his opponent  
who leapt to meet him. Miss. A fist slammed into his stomach and he  
was knocked back to the ground, breathless. He landed on his feet and  
threw himself forward, fists flying at his unprepared enemy just as  
the man touched down. The fists were blocked easily and a foot rose  
to crush into his side.  
  
Ranma collapsed to the ground, bellows pumping. He'd lost a bit of  
his conditioning after most of a month relaxing and spending much of  
the time asleep. His pop woulda been disgusted, for him to run short  
of breath so easily against an imaginary opponent. He'd have to get  
back into shape as quickly as possible. Not that it mattered much.  
  
He forced the air out quickly in a small explosion, then stood, sucked  
it back in, and started again.  
  
He stopped immediately when the crazy chick entered the arena. Chloe  
he might not have felt arrive. The crazy chick was like a weird kid  
who had been in his class one year, though. The boy would burst out  
yelling stuff all the time and not even notice he was doing it. The  
girl was like that only she did it while carrying around a megaphone.  
She never actually said anything, but she didn't need to. He knew she  
was there.  
  
She walked out not looking at him at all, and stopped near the center.  
Chloe was with her. Neither of them looked at him but he went and sat  
down in the stands anyway. If he got in the way she'd probably shoot  
him again. Saying he was there first wouldn't do any good. She  
wouldn't care.  
  
Ranma watched Chloe get beaten on by a pair of nun-chucks, this time.  
His pop had never taught him those, so he tried to memorize all the  
tricks the other girl used. He could figure out where they had gotten  
the things, then practice with them later.  
  
What the hell were they using nun-chucks for, anyway?  
  
  
Ranma frowned, looking up from the book as Chloe walked by, talking to  
that girl in the shy manner she had with the crazy chick. What the  
hell was she saying? He'd started listening whenever he could, trying  
to pick out the words, but he could never find them in his dictionary.  
It was annoying.  
  
"Keep going," Artena said.  
  
The crazy woman was making him read the crappy book about Alice out  
loud to her. Practicing his French, she said. He didn't even have to  
know what the words meant to speak what it said on the page, so what  
was the point?  
  
He started reading again.  
  
  
He limped back to the Manor. Smacking himself on the shin with those  
things had really hurt, but he knew how to use them well enough now.  
In case he ever needed such a skill.  
  
He'd spent a few days looking for the things before Artena had simply  
given them to him. Odd that she'd lent him a pair without even having  
to be asked, though. How'd she know?  
  
  
Ranma stopped again and glared towards the doorway. What the hell was  
she saying? He should know by now! "How come I can't understand  
her?" he demanded. It was really pissing him off!  
  
Artena smiled pleasantly. "Chloe is talking in English. You haven't  
learned that yet."  
  
"Oh." She thought he was gonna study another new language? Artena  
was as nuts as the crazy girl.  
  
  
He came to a stop, his breathing heavy but stable and smooth. He  
could barely hear his heartbeat now, his body again accustomed to the  
exercise that it'd been getting for years. Quit for a month and it  
was like having to start all over again. Scary.  
  
Ranma turned to leave, done practicing for the moment, and almost  
missed a step. That girl was at the edge of the arena, sitting down  
in the first row of benches, watching him. He hadn't known she was  
there at all. How long had she been watching? Why hadn't he sensed  
her?  
  
She could have taken her gun out and been taking aim, pointing it  
right at his head, able to fire at any time, and he'd never even have  
known what hit him. Scary.  
  
He walked out, flinching only slightly as her oppressive malevolence  
suddenly returned. He didn't even peek back over his shoulder to make  
sure she wasn't about to shoot him. Why would she bother, at that  
point? She could have done it already.  
  
  
Ranma slammed the book shut. "There. The end," he said in French.  
No more Alice, and no more reading to Artena.  
  
The woman just nodded, and responded in kind. "Good. Tomorrow you  
and Chloe will go to the village to get some new books." She looked  
down at his feet, and Ranma did, too. "You can get more clothes, and  
some shoes, as well. It will be too cold to go barefoot, soon. Chloe  
will know what you'll need, and where to get it."  
  
More books? Yay. Shoes would be nice. Not that he needed them, but  
sometimes he'd step on a rock that was pointed up like a little tooth  
reaching out to take a bite out of him. "How come the other girl  
isn't coming along?"  
  
"Do you want her to?"  
  
"No." 


End file.
